Why Does My Cat Scratch The Floor Around His Food

Why does my cat scratch the area around his food.

Why does my cat scratch the floor around his food.

Many cats will scratch paw or knead the ground around their food bowl before or after eating. Another mysterious bit of behavior from your pal felis catus. Why does my cat scratch around his food. Wild cats as well as feral cats have all been observed burying any uneaten food to avoid attracting predators or scavengers.

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. In the wild a cat has some sort of lair. A common mistake cat owners make is that when their cat swipes their paw on the floor around their food dish they think that they are covering up the food like they would their poop in a litter box.

Whether it s a favored tree or a little cave it s somewhere that belongs only to him. Scratching around the food bowl is a common behaviour in cats which is completely normal. 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. This assumption is inaccurate.

Now that you know at a high level why this happens. 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. The pawing and digging is an example of instinctive behavior meaning your cat probably didn t learn it from its mother. Everything your cat does even the things that make no sense to you at all are geared towards the cat s survival.

What is floor pawing in cats. Many cat owners assume this is a clear sign that the cat isn t interested in the food. Although this behavior is obsolete in captivity it still happens which confuses cat owners. Domestic cat this is part of the burying behavior discussed above.

Another theory is that as cats in the wild tend to eat where they sleep they don t want a rotting carcass lying around.