We put fresh water down all the time but my cat doesn't seem to be drinking it??? He does go out so I assume he gets it from outside, but is this normal?

Do you feed wet food? If so your cat will get virtually all it's water requirement from it's food. I can't find it now but I previously linked to an article that basically calculated that a cat eating solely wet food containing 78% moisture would obtain roughly 98% of it's daily water requirements from it's food.

My cat is an indoor cat and I rarely see her drink, perhaps once or twice a week at most.

Cats derive most of their fluid requirements from the food they eat and are not great drinkers. If your feeding a wet diet this is most likely why he appears to not be drinking much. However, since he goes outside and many cats prefer to drink from outside sources, then he may just be doing that! Some cats also dislike the chemicals in tap water and some people provide bottled water for this reason.

I'm not really in favour of cats drinking from outside pools etc owing to the things they might pick up. For instance Giardia infection can be contracted this way, amongst other things!

Yeah he has wet food twice a day. This puts my mind at ease, thanks. Plus, our next door neighbour has just had a water feature built in his garden so no doubt the taste of fresh, cold running water beats day old, luke warm water...

What do you feed her Ali? Mine, although much older do actually drink way more than this, so much so at one time I suspected kidney problems ( since been discounted thankfully! ) while fed Bozita and Animonda. I must start monitoring them indivually abit more, but I'm fairly sure all have a good daily drink!

I had been feeding her the likes of Macs and Granatapet although recently I've been considering starting an elimination diet so have been trying a few different foods such as Herrmanns, Power of Nature, Ropocat to find out what she's most accepting of and what I'm likely going to be able to keep her interested in long enough for an elimination diet to work.

To be honest it doesn't really seem to matter what I feed her she still rarely drinks. I do also add a couple of teaspoons of water to each meal so maybe that's it?

It's possible the cheeky monkey does all her drinking in the day whilst I'm at work, I don't think this is the case though because I don't see her drink at weekends either. Having a water fountain it's not really possible to monitor how much she's drunk.

Aaah I see! Yes, am sure the additional water in food goes some way towards explaining the apparent lack of drinking otherwise and probably explains why mine glop away at the water bowls. Honestly, I was very concerned about my oldest (18) last summer - she used to wait for me to fill up the potted-plants in the garden so she could drink from the drip-trays!!

Mine don't drink either (wet and raw diet). In fact I got a little worried about Hobbs as I caught him drinking from the fountain (yep we still have one though it is more of feature in our utility room than actually being utilised) or from outside plant trays. Then I learnt that the cheeky sod indulged himself on our neighbour's cats dry food. Since he has been grounded and sticking to his wet/raw diet he isn't drinking anymore.

Same for me.
I don't add any water to my cats food (they turn their little noses up when I do) so I've found on Grau/Smilla/Bozita/Animonda they do drink a small amount, but a lot more when they get dry food. Freckle prefers to drink from a drinking glass and Bloo from his water fountain.

my kayla used to drink water when she was on dry but now she doesn't touch the stuff although if i am watering the plants she drinks from the ground..get a bit worried as sometimes i have added plant food to the water but i tell her off when she does that as don't want her to get sick