My cats dont drink!

[Twonewcats]

We adopted two cats a couple of weeks ago, and noticed that we've never seen them drink anything. I've always got water out, but the level never seems to go down, and we havent seen them anywhere near the bowls of water. I have also tried a little chicken stock cube in it (just a little), as per advice on a forum, but they still didnt go near it. I have now started adding a spoonful of water to their food.

But is this normal/anything to worry about?!
(In case it's relevant, they have been indoors for 2 weeks, but their previous owner allowed them out. We'll let them out soon, when we feel they're settled properly. )

We have a cat who doesn't drink he makes Garfield look positively energetic and can't be bothered to walk to the water bowl. We used to feed him dried food but he developed urinary problems and nearly died because he wasn't drinking enough! We spent nearly £2000 on vets bills trying to treat him and he was just not getting any better and swallowing five tablets a day we were advised to put him down when a colleague at work suggested we feed him cheap sachets of cat food that have more jelly in that meat (Waitrose essentials).
Since then he's never looked back he pees loads, his fur looks amazing much better than he ever did on the very expensive dried food we were feeding him and he's more energetic, he now frequently (well twice a day) makes it off his chair and even down the garden path although any further would of course be a bridge too far for him.
The other week Waitrose run out of their own cheap brand and sent their more expensive brand more meat less jelly, immediately we noticed he was peeing significantly less.

We were told by the rescue to put water out away from their food. Little cat now has one near his food and one well away. He does drink quite a bit from the other bowl.

I'm not sure I would put stock cube in their water. It's full of salt!

Can I clarify again re the stock cube!! It was a TINY bit of a low-salt cube. I tried it ONE TIME purely to see if it inticed them. It was recommended to try this on various vet websites! Anyway I haven't done it since cos it made no difference to them anyway!

And they're definitely not drinking from the toilet or kitchen sink. And they're not drinking from puddles. So it looks as if the jelly in the food is enough to hydrate them for now.

Could be - although cats are pretty sneaky when it comes to drinking. (The odd, covert, lap.) And they don't need to store up huge amounts of water like dogs do for pee marking purposes. How much wet food are they getting through each day?

Either 3 pouches each or 1 tin each

So they could be getting as much as 300-400g of wet food? (They must be very active cats.) On Lone's calculations (the 80% water bit) it sounds as if they're obtaining most if not all of their required liquid intake from their food. I would still reckon that they're having the odd fly lap from their water bowl (which you'd be unlikely to notice) but if they're peeing fine and seem well hydrated, sounds as if things are OK.

Would anyone here link to which fountain they have?
I am torn because I don't want something that requires electricity, but it might be worth it in long run. Friend had a very nice ceramic fountain that she got from Etsy, cost US $100+. Said That the cheaper ones went slimy.

They're not active yet, as they're not outdoors. But the pouches box says to feed 3-4 pouches a day, and they're having 3.

I had the pet smart one, quick rinse round every night & I put it in the dw every week.

I feed mine three sachets a day (he believes he should have 4) he definitely doesn't drink anywhere else and he does 5-6 enormous pees a day.

I worry about this, the only time I have seem him drink when he had a UTI and he lapped from the tap, I have given up on the water bowl, I just add more water to his wet food, which seems to work OK. I also bought a water fountain which he didn't use!