We never used a fountain or even a particularly special dish. We used to just use empty plastic boxes from margarine or other foods as a water bowl. There did not seem much point spending money on buying a fancy dish when the cat would not really notice the difference. Besides, it is more environmentally friendly to re-use materials as much as possible before sending them for recycling. Furthermore, it saves resources by reducing the quantity of new objects, which need to be manufactured. The cat had no problem at all with it or we would have noticed that she was not drinking and done something about it. With a lot of these things, we often transfer our own needs and assume the cat has the same ones. When we buy an attractive looking water dish for our pet, we are really (to some extent) buying it for ourselves. The pet is not concerned about the appearance of the dish so long as it is functional. We used old plastic tubs as food and water dishes for all of our pets and it seemed to do no harm while saving both money and (to a small extent) the environment.
