I would say you found one way, it leaves him with no water. Alexei will grow out of it once he realizes what that means. Kittens do pretty strange things as part of their learning process. I used to have one that ran headalong into walls without braking or stopping, and when she would be knocked, spinning across the wood floor, she would act confused like, 'What was that?' before realizing, 'Oh, I was running, wasn't I?' and then start running about again like nothing had happened. We thought maybe she had a balance or sight problem, but the vet said she was fine, just nuts. Okay, I can live with that.
She eventually stopped, and is now 9 years old, but still nuts in other ways.
I had one cat who guarded the waterbowl. It was spooky, we thought the bowl was haunted. We had a tiny apartment kitchen, and sometimes we'd go in, and they would be Mikey, wide-eyed, looking at us, then the bowl, then at us again,like he was saying, 'Did you see that??? Look, it was here just a second ago, in my bowl! Stay, maybe it will come back!' We conjected that a water spirit lived in the bowl, and when no one else was looking, it would rise out of the bowl and mock Mikey (that was his kind of luck), only to disappear when someone else entered the kitchen. Mikey would guard the bowl until he fell asleep, and then his head would droop into the water. He'd suddenly wake up, with a wet face, and look at you like you did it.
