Why Does My Cat Scratch The Floor Around Her Food Bowl

Nikita s dry food bowl is in the hallway a few meters away from the main door leading out of the apartment.

Why does my cat scratch the floor around her food bowl.

I experimented with 2 snacks one she liked and one she didn t. So when my cat eats some of her food first then begins to paw around the dish she s following an instinct that doesn t make much sense for her circumstances she is after all a house cat. She scratched at the first one and ate the second so i now interprete the scratching as her saying this smells like my poo since she will eat other foods she deemed worthy. Another theory is that as cats in the wild tend to eat where they sleep they don t want a rotting carcass lying around.

So now you know why your cat may scratch around her water bowl. Scratching around the food bowl is a common behaviour in cats which is completely normal. If you free feed leaving a food bowl full of kibble out all the time this will only encourage the behavior. This is made difficult if the bowl is glass or has reflective material such as shiny metal.

Ditty s motivation for scratching the floor and wall around her food after she eats differs from why she s scratching the wall after using her litterbox. Why do cats dig and scratch around their food bowl. I read that if bowl isnt shallow it may bother their. Your cat is scratching around her water bowl because she is trying to gauge the difference from the surface to the ground.

If the bowl is gone he won t have anything he needs to cover up. We have 6 cats now the last 2 my daughter adopted from shelter they are a mother daughter pair i can understand why the daughter will stick paw into wet food and eat off paw too many faces by the bowl but the mother will paw out dry food onto the floor to eat with no cats around. My lani does this with food she doesn t like. The most effective way to stop the behavior is to take his food bowl away from him when he s done eating.

Some cats may take this behavior to an extreme spending a good deal of time scratching at the floor or kneading the carpet around their food bowl. She does the digging thing and it happens regularly that i ll come home from work and all my mail will be on top or around her food bowl. Wild cats as well as feral cats have all been observed burying any uneaten food to avoid attracting predators or scavengers. In some cases cats will also drag objects such as towels on top of their food bowls.

These are large translucent storage containers that the cat can easily turn around in and when filled with about 3 inches of litter dig in to her heart s content.