What weird mealtime behaviour is my cat doing now?!

[ScaredButUnavoidable]

I’ve gone through numerous episodes of her refusing to eat food brands that she’s eaten hundreds of times before….. we all know that’s par for the course, but I’m currently experiencing something new!

For the last few days she’s been getting more reluctant to eat her wet food again. She’d cry for her food, jump about excitedly when she saw me open the pouch and then skip over to her feeding mat when I placed her bowl on the floor and then the looks of disdain would begin. She’s sniff the food, then keep scratching the area around the bowl, stick her paw in the food bowl and start prodding the food, occasionally sniffing her paw or the food again, and be doing this for a couple of minutes before walking away and completely refusing to eat it.

I have continued to persevere with no luck, trying three different pouches flavours each day.

Yesterday evening though my son accidentally kicked over her food bowl and all the wet food spilled over the kitchen floor covering a large area as he’d really sent the bowl flying. My cat came running at the commotion and then for some crazy reason she ate all the food off the kitchen floor!!! This is the same brand of food she has been refusing from her bowl for days (the same bowl she had been using for 3+ months).

I thought it was odd but I was just so relieved to see her eating and thought we’d had a breakthrough.

Breakfast time came this morning, I put her pouch in her bowl and she point blank refused it again, displaying all the behaviours I described above.

Out of curiosity I tipped the food out onto a random piece of flat plastic that was in the kitchen, and she then ate it all!!

What is going on?!

Do cats suddenly decide they their food bowls are suddenly not worthy of being eaten food out of?!

One of our cats is weird - I mean, they all are - but there's a definite hierarchy in where and how he will eat food. Upstairs food is better than downstairs. Outside better than in. If you feed him on an upstairs windowsill or flat roof he will eat food he has previously refused to eat in years. He will not eat cut up chicken in a bowl, ever. If you put cut up chicken on his leg while he's lying down, he will eat it. If you throw it to him, he will eat it. If you throw it outside he will eat it. If you put the bowl outside, he will not eat it. There's probably some evolutionary reason like more competition outside, and being fed upstairs is a treat, but it's also just as probable that he's a twat.

It might be worth checking for teeth problems or that her chin isn’t a bit sore. One of mine gets a bit of chin acne and if it flares up she’ll do this. Possibly to do with the angle of the bowl irritating it when she’s trying to eat!

When our last cat suddenly started being funny with food it turned out she needed six teeth out. She was a total gannet though and never fussy so it was really out of character for her not to immediately clear her plate and we booked her in to the vet almost straight away.

We have loads of different food dishes, and there are definitely some Louie prefers. He likes wet food in a flat saucer-like dish (I got about six little ones from Sostrene Grene which I think are meant for things like hummus or dips) and dry from a typical cat bowl. He’s much fussier about food in general though so it’s not odd behaviour.

The thing is she has no problem eating her dry biscuits out of exactly the same bowl!

She baffles me 🤣

It will be the angle of the bowl.

Biscuits require a quick in and out grab whereas wet food requires keeping the head in and pushing the food up the side to grab better.

Is the bowl wide enough so she isn't getting whisker fatigue? Do you have a spare saucer ir side plate for now?

I was also going to say it’s the bowl/angle/whisker fatigue. Mine takes chunks of his wet food out of the normal bowl then eats it on the floor. I got him a wider shallower bowl recently and he doesn’t do it with that.

Is whisker fatigue a real thing?

Off to Google whisker fatigue…….

Whisker fatigue is definitely a thing for some cats. I think it’s a kind of over stimulation response. Our previous girl would have eaten out of a welly boot so clearly wasn’t bothered at all. When I tried Louie with wet food in a flat dish I realised he preferred it.

This is the kind of bowls we have - he was doing exactly what @Madamswearsalot describes (messy!). He would prefer to eat only dry food, preferably cheap rubbish like Go Cat, but I want him to have at least some wet, so he gets Untamed chicken in a cute dish. SG do this dish in loads of designs, and tend to bring out seasonal versions, and it gives me great joy to pick up festive bowls and the like.

Yes.

I bought some cute mixer/picky bowls recently and thought they were a decent cat bowl shape and size. After a week she was deliberately trying to chew her whiskers off and going crazy but it took us idiot owners several weeks to understand why (thought new cat on the block if honest). She ended up with only a couple of broken whiskers and was distressed. Changed to saucers and within a week was less distressed. Took a while for her whiskers to grow back, they are lovely now (see photo).

Any update @ScaredButUnavoidable ? Are saucers being used now or has she gone back to her original bowls?

We use a flat dinner plate on top of a mat, to catch the spills. They’re so much happier.