Outdoor Cat Care: How to Keep an Outdoor Cat's Food and Water from Freezing

What's cozier than wintertime? When you're snug and safe indoors with your cat, it doesn’t really matter what the weather is doing outside. Let it snow, right? But if you care for community, stray, or feral cats, cold outdoor temperatures can have a major impact on their lives and the care you offer. You might find yourself wanting to provide a heated cat house or even build your own, but there's another important element to provide: fresh, unfrozen food and water for stray cats.

Frozen Water and Frozen Food: Two Winter Problems for Feral Cats

Providing unfrozen food and water for outdoor cats becomes extra important during winter weather. Mammals, including cats, need even more calories to keep their bodies warm in cold weather, but extremely cold food can be unpalatable to cats, so they actually eat less instead of more. And if the food is frozen, it's simply too difficult to eat at all. The same goes for water. You might think of summer as a time when outdoor cats need plenty of water, and it is, but winter hydration is equally important since cats may be less likely to drink in cold weather. Luckily, you can help significantly with only a few simple steps.

How to Keep Feral Cats' Water from Freezing

When outdoor temperatures trend down towards 32°F, you can experiment with several popular tricks for preventing frozen water for cats. These methods include:

• Using a dark-colored bowl to better retain heat

• Changing the water multiple times a day

• Insulating the bowl with an insulating foam border

• Placing a floating ping-pong ball in the water to keep the water’s surface moving

While all these methods can theoretically help, you may be fighting a losing battle. Once temperatures drop low enough, the cat’s water is going to freeze rapidly or at least become very unpalatable, regardless of the tricks you try. (Basic physics at work!)

Why struggle? The easiest and most reliable way to combat frozen water is to use a safety-listed, electrically heated cat bowl. Whenever the bowl senses the water is too cold, it simply turns on the heat and re-warms the water.

Not only does an electrically heated bowl keep the water from freezing, it keeps it a lot more enjoyable for cats to drink, which means the cats are less likely to suffer from winter dehydration. One great option is the K&H Thermal-Bowl Heated Outdoor Water Bowl, which makes it super simple to keep water from freezing. Just fill it up, place it in an area protected from wind, plug it in, and have some peace of mind.

Keep Cat Food from Freezing

You can also use a heated bowl to keep the community cats’ food thawed. A nice option is the K&H Thermo-Kitty Café. With two bowls, it’s easy to use one side for food and the other for additional food or water. Again, the MET safety-listed, thermostatically controlled electric heater keeps the food temperature out of the freezing range without any hassle or difficulty on your end.

Are K&H heated cat bowls safe?

Absolutely! All K&H electrical products are MET safety tested. The heated bowls are designed and intended for outdoor use and only use a handful of watts to keep the water from freezing. And the heating elements don’t run constantly but are automatically controlled by an internal thermostat, so the heated bowl only warms the food or water when necessary. They’re robust and ready to perform through tough winter conditions. And if you’d like to offer the cats themselves some protection from those conditions while they enjoy the food or water, you can place your heated cat bowl inside a feral cat shelter like a K&H Outdoor Kitty Dining Room for extra comfort.

Make Life Simple!

Keeping outdoor cats’ water and food from freezing doesn’t have to be complicated — you need the right tools to perform the right job, and safe, electrically heated bowls can easily fill this need. The community cats will thank you!

This is the final post of a three-part series dedicated to outdoor cat care. If you missed the other two articles, check out Are heated houses safe for feral/stray cats? and How to Build a Safe Cat House for Ferals/Strays.