42 Dreams of Arizona Bay

I fixed something on my own yesterday.

Last Christmas, I bought my cats a water fountain because I noticed that any chance any of them got, they liked to drink running water. It was expensive, it was confusing to put together, and worst of all, they were scared of it for a couple of days. But they did get used to it and I was happy the first time I saw my scaredy cat Ziggy trying it out.

Unfortunately, automated things are never as great as they first appear. Take the LitterMaid. Which is great as long as you have one cat who doesn’t like to poop at the back of the machine, often clogging up the raking mechanism. It’s not really handsfree; it needs to be cleaned a little more often than I clean it, both in the pan and in places where the cat gets a little messy on the machine itself. It gets clogged. It’s noisy. It’s hella noisy when it’s clogged, which means that it will try to rake itself 10 times before stopping, which is really great to listen to in the middle of the night and you don’t want to get out of bed. And worst of all, Merlin refuses to use it.

Then there’s the Petmate deluxe water fountain.

It’s also sometimes noisy, though once it got working for a while, it was OK. And then there’s the noise it makes when the water gets low. I suppose that’s actually good because it reminds me to refill it. And then you have to remember to replace the filters, which are not available in every PetSmart in town. And then you have to clean it out a fair amount because mineral deposits build up. And worst of all, my cats like to dump morsels of food in it. I guess none of these are really design flaws of the fountain, though, other than the noise.

But the other day, the fountain ran dry and I didn’t notice. I freaked out for a minute — the instructions warn you to NEVER let it run dry or it’s like a nuclear meltdown.

I refilled the fountain anyway, ignoring dire radioactive warnings, and turned the thing back on. It started making noises like it was going to pump water, but it wasn’t until a half-hour later that I realized it wasn’t doing anything. No fresh water was running down the ramp.

This was terrible! I ruined it! Now I would have to remember to check the defunct fountain more frequently because I wouldn’t be able to rely on the noise.

I tried taking it apart and seeing if anything was clogging it. Nothing. Tried plugging it again, same thing.

So I sat on it for a couple of days. I figured I’d probably end up buying another pump. And this is another example how the internet is great.

I looked up the price of a new pump on Amazon, and in the comment field, a bunch of people wrote how you just needed to take the actual pump apart and clean it. No need to spend $13 plus shipping.

So I gave it a shot. And it worked! The fountain started expelling water immediately and in a couple moments almost silently, as it had not done for a long time.

It’s kind of gross, though, the work that goes into such things. Just like the LitterMaid, it’s not clean or handsfree. Sometimes I have to clean cat hair out of the fountain or soggy remains of food. But at least my cats seem to like it well enough. If only Merlin would start using the LitterMaid again, all my problems would be solved.

I’ve actually been sort of tempted to buy a newer version or a different brand, but I’ve read reviews and am not convinced that would make me or the cats happy. Never change the litter box again, my ass.