A cat sitting in front of a full water bowl and still not drinking enough is not being difficult. It is doing exactly what its biology expects it to do. The problem is that biology evolved for a diet of wet prey, not a bowl of kibble.
Domestic cats descended from desert-dwelling ancestors who extracted most of their daily water from the animals they ate. That lineage left cats with a thirst response that is genuinely weak compared to dogs or humans. A cat fed wet food, which is roughly 70 to 80 percent water, compensates for a low drinking drive without effort. A cat fed dry food, which is roughly 8 to 10 percent water, has to make up a significant deficit through drinking alone, and its instincts do not push it hard enough to close that gap reliably.
