[This is a guest post by Autodidact’s husband.]

We recently attempted (unsuccessfully) to switch our cats from the icky, smelly canned food they’ve been on, to a cleaner, less stinky diet of dry food. To ensure that they would continue to consume enough water after the switch, we decided to buy one of those pet water fountains that’s supposed to be attractive to them and encourage them to drink. However, I didn’t really do much research on the available models, plucking the first one I encountered - the Aqua Fountain Aqua Falls - from the shelves of the local superstore and assuming (foolishly) that it would just work.

After just a few hours of leaving the fountain running, we realized that this wasn’t the case. Not only was the pump VERY noisy, but the water was splashing out over the edges of the fountain reservoir, creating a large wet patch on the floor, and deterring the cats from going anywhere near it. I checked the manual carefully to make sure that we weren’t doing something wrong, and consulted the collective wisdom of the internet, but although we certainly weren’t alone in experiencing this problem, no-one could suggest an actual solution.

And so, for the next 3 weeks, the Aqua Falls remained unplugged, merely serving as a rather expensive water receptacle and slowly collecting bits of half-chewed cat food. We couldn’t return it to the store we’d bought it from because we didn’t have the original packaging, so I decided to do one more search online to see if anyone had come up with a solution. One product reviewer suggested that it was all about the narrow gap through which the water was forced, creating the ‘falls’ effect. He recommended inserting something into the middle of this gap in order to increase its height, thereby encouraging more of the water to flow through the center, and less towards the edges. I was willing to give it a shot, so I retrieved the fountain from its corner of shame, completely disassembled and cleaned it, and then rebuilt it. I jammed a small nail into the gap, filled the fountain, and plugged it in. The results were underwhelming: the nail completely disrupted the water flow, creating two messy, splashy streams on either side.

Out of desperation, I began disassembling the fountain again to see if there was any other way I could bodge a solution without completely breaking the thing. Just as I was about to throw in the towel, I happened to notice a small protrusion on the side of the pump. Closer inspection revealed this to be A FREAKING POWER CONTROL. A control which the manufacturers don’t mention anywhere in the product manual, and which no-one else who I had seen online, complaining about the splashiness, had mentioned finding. A quick test run confirmed that simply reducing the power level of the pump by half not only reduced the volume of the pump, but also totally eliminated the splashing problem!

So, there you have it, folks: the hidden solution for which you’ve all been looking. I just had to share, and this seemed like a good place.

You’re welcome.

Of course, having their own personal water fountain isn’t going to stop the cats from drinking out of the dog’s bowl.