Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

If you chose to join me in signing up to add this chore of cleaning your beloved pet's fountain to your routine twice a week - every week for the rest of your life - I hope your cats LOVE it. To tell you the real truth what Ceba seems to enjoy the most - is the attention she is getting while Mom (me) is taking her fountain apart and cleaning it. If you have a cat that is fascinated when you clean their litter box and then immediately HAS to use their new clean litter box and chatter away/ talk to you while they are using it? Well this is JUST like that! I may be way out of line here - but I honestly think that the pet owners that claim this is a GREAT product are not worried about their pets having clean drinking water. (I don't mean to insult anyone - obviously every pet owner that purchases this item really cares for their pets and wants the best for them.) What I mean to say is - without realizing the fountain is not keeping the water sparkling clean - they set it and forget it (NOT their fault because the brochure that comes in the box with the fountain tells them so). They clean it when they realize it is VISIBLY absolutely filthy. With filthy being - their breaking point in nastiness because after all - it's not like they have to drink out of the thing! It's a "cool" fountain they bought because they "love" their pets and want the "Best" for them and the pamphlet "told them to". Show me a customer who cleans this pet fountain religiously twice a week and still loves it? I'll stand corrected. My background is in biogeochemistry and the charcoal/ foam filter is basically a really flimsy fish tank filter insert. WAY overpriced filters that honestly don't do much. You'll be paying for a specialty-made-to-fit filter , well for as long as you keep using the fountain. All it would take to max out the filter would be for your cat to drop one piece of dried cat food into the water bowl and then dissolve before you notice it. if your cat is like mine that pretty much happens - several times a day! We purchased this because our cat Ceba loves running water - she turns the faucets on in our home. Now - I dismantle the fountain and scrub it with antibacterial soap twice a week. It's not a quick task. I then run the pieces through the dishwasher - and it takes up a lot of room I would have otherwise used for people dishes. I have a calendar on the fridge so I can check off when I've ran it through the dishwasher so that I am guilt free that I might have forgotten. So - I'm trying to warn you before you purchase it as your obviously considering doing if you have read this far - For maybe the rest of my life - I'll be guilted into dismantling this contraption, running it through the dishwasher, putting x's on calendars, buying flimsy charcoal filters for it - and honestly - Ceba still prefers to drink out of the sink. Wishing you and your pets a long and happy life together. Thanks for reading. Hope it helps you. Britt