My cat is licking the coal

Question
Hi, I noticed that there was a question (12/03/05) from someone who's cat was coal licking. Well mine is too.
He is a 13 year old neutered male, he was drinking lots of water and was diagnosed with kidney problems about a 10 days ago. He has been on meds for 10 days and his returned totally to his normal perky self, he stopped his continuous drinking, and is eating normally.
But yesterday evening and today he climbed into the coal bucket and started intently licking the coal (we have an open log fire and so have a small  bucket with coal in order to make a base for the fire each evening).
My cat is due back at the vets in a few days so I will mention it then, BUT....please can you let me know if the previous correspondent with the same problem with her cat found out anything more on this subject? (Her cat also had some kidney problem by the sound of it).
Thanks


Answer
We weren't able to find out what caused it, only to establish that allowing the cat to do this is really not a good idea. There are far better ways of getting minerals into his diet! :-)

My suggestion is to mix some red pepper with water and mist the coal with it. This should make it far less palatable to him and should not interfere with burning it.

By the way, did your vet recommend that you get an automatic fountain for your cat? This is a really good thing to have to help cats with kidney trouble keep going. It makes drinking water more appealing to them. My guys like it so much I recently bought a second one. I use the Drinkwell model but there are other good ones too.

Hope this helps

iris