My best friend’s cat used to eat like this all the time. She didn’t like canned food, as she couldn’t knock it out of the dish in bits and then “stalk” it.
As for my cats, the youngest one loves all kinds of people food, and will go after it any chance he gets. The older one disdains people food, most canned cat food, and all but a few brands of dry cat food. She’s very persnickity. We tried putting some canned salmon on top of her dry food once, as a treat. Not only wouldn’t she eat the salmon, but she wouldn’t eat the dry food underneath once we took the salmon off. We had to empty and wash the dish, refill with dry food, and then she ate it.
Well, Bodhicattva and Grendel are Not Allowed to have milk jug rings, since we inevitably find them in piles of vomit. Same with rubber bands.
Also, if Grendel (the pukey one) finds me staring at a fresh pile she’ll come up to it and try to bury it, meowing vociferously. She’s clearly saying “Clean it up, dumbass!”
My cat Austen will scoop her kibble out of the bowl to sort it. I used to mix in a handlful of the larger, triangular-shaped Iams hairball kibble in with her regular, smaller, round kibble, but it turns out that Austen doesn’t like the hairball kibble and won’t eat it. I’ve watched her take the kibble out of the bowl piece by piece with her paw and put it down on the rubber matt, eat the little bits, and leave the triangular pieces piled to one side. I’ve ceased to give her the hairball kibble.
One of my roomates had really cool polydactly cat. He had so many toes on his front feet that he basically had an opposing thumb. He would lie lazily on his side by the food bowl. He reach out grab some and bring it to his mouth.
He looked exactly like a guy lying on the couch grabbing chips from a bowl on the coffee table, which I figure he learned from me
Since we have a passel of pussycats, we use dry-food dispensers that have a reservoir tank. The food funnels into a bowl, and as the bowl is emptied, more food drops down to replace it. We keep the dispenser up on a high table so that the dogs cannot reach it. Cats, of course, jump right up and serve themselves. About once a week, this happens: our youngest kitty, Ivan the Purrible, paws all the dry food out of the bowl. The food falls onto the floor. The bowl is almost instantly refilled from the reservoir container. The dogs come a-runnin’ and eat the cat food off the floor. Ivan paws more food out of the bowl. The reservoir is eventually emptied of cat food, and the dogs are very, very happy.
Our oldest cat is the quirky eater. She also fishes her food out and eats it off the floor, and sometimes she curls her little paw arond it and lifts it daintily to her mouth. It’s the weirdest thing to watch. It’s like she has hands.
As for drinking, I always say she’s scrying. She sits very prettily in front of the bowl and bows her head over the water. She stares deep down, into the bottom of the bowl. Then, she lifts her left paw up, and makes circles on the surface of the water with it. Over and over and over. Eventually, she lifts her paw out, which is only wet on the pads, shakes the bit of water off, and finally,* finally*, just drinks like normal. Sometimes she’ll stop and start the circular motion again, always staring, staring, staring. I think she just likes the patterns. Maybe she should lay off the catnip for a while. :dubious:
My Charlie dies this with his moist food. Lately there has been a bigger mess than usual around the food bowl , and I only discovered why today , when he dipped into it with a front paw and brought it to his mouth . I freaked ! Never seen anything like it !
Q.E.D., I have a cat who also picks out kibble, in a most dainty manner, and eats them one by one. She also drinks by scooping up the water and drinking from the little bowl she makes with her paw.
I have another one who is a bit underweight. I give her a bowl and she eats about half and then stops. I have to move the bowl to the windowsill and she follows it and eats the rest. She will NOT eat the whole bowl in its original location; it must be moved to the sill.
I cater to her every whim because I want her to gain weight and she had a hard life up to the time I got her so I want her remaining years to be happy. If the windowsill makes her happy and makes her eat, so be it. Sigh.
Zephyr is an amazingly boring cat most of the time, but whenever he gets chicken he insists on taking it out of the bowl and eating on the carpet. If I feed him his chicken outside, he’ll take the chicken out of the bowl and eat it on the front doormat, which is sort of carpet-like.
One of my kitties, who coincidentally is also named Pepper, will eat her goodies this way, as well as drink her water. But she eats her daily kibble the old-fashined way.
Gracie does the grab two kibbles and eat from her paw thing. I think it’s very cute.
For her first birthday party, we gave her and Snuggles a can of tuna or something to split. While Snuggs just chowed down on his, Gracie tried to bury hers under the kitchen floor with the ‘litterbox’ manoever. She does this a lot actually when presented with anything she finds less than appealing. One disgusted flick of her paw, then she walks off. We get the message loud and clear.
My two cats will meow at my feet as I’m preparing their dinner, and at the moment when I’m dishing the food out into their bowl, one of them (always the same one) suddenly darts into the living room and does an end-run around the sofa. Always clockwise, and always makes it back to the kitchen befre I get the dish on the floor.
Misty likes to drink from the faucet as well-I forgot about that. It has to be the kitchen faucet. She stands on the divide between the two sinks and cries to let you know she wants you to “drip” it.
My late cat, Fluffy, used to beg constantly. If you weren’t in the room, she’d help herself-but if you were there, she’d just cry until you gave in.
Most cats, when examining a foreign object, touch it with an exploratory paw. Presumably this would be done with the “dominant” paw? If I had mine I’d test it.
