A Cat Fountain for the Downstairs Bath

Darwin has always preferred to drink his water from the downstairs bathroom sink:

2 months ago my friend Ted asked why we never looked into a motion sensor faucet attachment for him.  I asked hubby and he was like “I’ve been saying that for years!”   Oops, sorry hubby!  So I set out to find such a thing.  The first one I bought was an “iTouchless EZ Faucet PRO [#affiliate] Automatic Sensor Faucet Adapter for Bathroom, also use as Cat Fountain” [photos from Amazon]:

        

It was cheap [$45] and looked perfect.  It says “easily installed on any standard American faucet”.  Prior to it’s arrival I removed the faucet head from the bathroom sink:

       

But when the EZ Pro arrived it wouldn’t fit.  Over the next 2 weeks I spent HOURS at hardware stores [small ones and big box ones] looking for an adapter that would fit our faucet.  I tried measuring it first:

But I had, and still have, no idea how the damn things are measured.  Thankfully Abbie took me to the hardware store near her house which had an awesome metal panel that you could screw faucet parts to – both male & female – and figure out what size adapter you needed.  We determined I needed a 13/16″ x 55/64″ so I bought the one they had [yellow packaging]:

       

However once I got the adapter home, I realized our faucet head is female so I went to our local hardware store and bought a female to male adapter [blue packaging].  But that wouldn’t fit either!  I realized I needed a 55/64″ female x 13/16 male, which they don’t seem to make.   I was pondering whether I could jury rig something with different adapters all screwed together, but THEN I read the product reviews on Amazon more closely and realized 2 things:  [1] many people weren’t able to get the EZ Pro to attach to their sink and weren’t able to find adapters, so returned it, and [2] apparently it won’t even work with a black cat – WTF!  Which isn’t anywhere in the product description – I found it buried in the Amazon Q&A:

Question:  “Does anyone else have problems with their cat not being able to set off the sensor? Not sure if it’s the unit or the cat.”

Answer from iTouchless:  “On the color spectrum, the sensor picks up white better than black.  So if your cat is black or is trying to trip the sensor with dark color fur, the sensor might not pick them up.  The cat should be able to learn though.”  Ya.  Whatever.  I returned it.

Then I bought the AquaPurr [#affiliate] which I’d seen when I was first looking, which is 3x as much money [$130] but worth EVERY PENNY [photos from Amazon]:

I actually called the company first to ask if a black cat would trigger the sensor and they guy was like “of course, why wouldn’t it?” – my kind of answer!  It looks like a dentist tool, but it’s awesome and we love it and it’s super easy to set up and you don’t ever have to clean it:

        

It comes with THREE adapters and one of them was a perfect fit for our faucet!!!  I was so thrilled!  Within 1 minute of it being set up, Darwin came to check it out and immediately started drinking – that made me so excited that I immediately wrote to the company and told them how much I love them, with a photo of Darwin drinking.  They wrote back to say thanks 🙂

        

        

It has a little switch on the faucet which you flip down if you want to wash your hands.  Then flip back up and the water will come out of the cat fountain instead.  You just have to leave your cold water faucet turned on to a trickle [even if you turn your faucet way up, the water will still only come out of the AquaPurr at a trickle, which is awesome].  The default setting is 15 seconds of water per motion trigger, but I reset it to 1 minute since Darwin takes a while when he’s drinking and would just give up when it shut off after 15 seconds.

The next step will be cutting a hole through the bathroom door to install this cat door [#affiliate] we bought:

I wanted to make absolutely certain that Darwin was using the AquaPurr before cutting into the door, so last week hubby set up a night vision cam and it turns out he is!  A few times a night even:

       

        

But so far this is as far as I’ve gotten because I didn’t realize [or check – DUH!] to make sure the sabre saw blade was long enough to cut all the way through the door – OMG:

        

Oh well.  So tomorrow after work I’ll head to the hardware store for a 4″ blade instead of a 2½”.  Nothing is ever easy!!!  Plus I now realize I didn’t have to drill the starter hole in the center…  This is only the 2nd time I have used the sabre saw.  The first time was to cut out a cat head shape for the catio sleeping box:

Which was much easier since I was able to lay the piece of plywood flat.  But this time I’m sitting on the floor using the saw to cut through the door without taking it off the hinges.  MUCH HARDER.  But our doors are solid wood and extremely heavy and the cat door edge should cover my messy cut marks… I hope!