Ooooo! Russian Blue! Pretty kittykittykitty!
Luna will wait until you get out of the shower, then go in and lick up the water from the bottom of the tub. She has clean water in her bowl, but she prefers the shower water.
Great kitty names! And Ivan is sooo cute!
Tallulah does this as well. She’s also quite talkative and will meander into the bathroom as soon as she hears the shower curtain open, as if to say, “Leave some hot water for the laundry, sheesh. Hurry up, I’m thirsty.”
Tybalt, the Fuzzy Black Land Shark who deigns to allow me to share his house, eats his food normally, once he actually begins to eat. (Normally = sitting in the sphinx position, nose in the bowl, making occasional “snarf snort” noises.)
It’s the leadup to eating that’s idiosyncratic. He demands, at least once per day, to be stroked and petted for several minutes prior to eating. “Pet me while I eat” is his idea of decadent luxury: He’ll walk back and forth in front of his food station, purring while I stroke and scratch away; and every now and then he’ll amble toward the bowl, look at it for a few seconds as if he’s done with the pets and is ready to eat, and then come back for more attention. Eventually he’ll put his nose in the bowl, and I’ll know he’s had enough and is ready to chow down, because his purring will fade somewhat, to about half the main-motor level.
He just isn’t happy without “pet me while I eat” as part of his routine. Yeah, he’s spoiled. But he’s cute, so what are ya gonna do?
according to Pixel, it’s not spoiling if he deserves it. and Pixel definitely deserves it. i bet yours does too. 
Bern has a new trick in her “feed me” bag. When I ask if she’s hungry she’ll sit in front of the pantry cupboard and paw at it until I get in the kitchen. If I have placed the canned food in any other place but the pantry she will MEROOWWW at me until I put it in the pantry and take it back out. As I open the cans (new trick here) she will circle me, meowing the entire way. There’s a timing thing to it - it’s always clockwise, starting at my right side. She will circle around back to start, stop, sit, meow, then circle again. Cleo, OTOH, sits patiently under the kitchen table allowing Bern to be the clown.
Bern will eat half of her canned food then kick Cleo out and eat the rest of hers. It’s always the same type, but she will not finish her own. Cleo will walk away, sit in the doorway, and watch Bern eat. Once Bern comes up for air FWOMP Cleo is back and finishing it all off. Cleo is also the obese bulemic. If I make a motion to go into the kitchen FWOMP she’s at the kitty buffet (we always have a bowl of crunchy stuff plus they get 1 little can of moist/day). If I put the bowl up she will lick the floor.
With regards to water - Bern also paws at the bowl/cup. I figure it’s to see where the level is. They have a perpetual waterer in the kitchen kitty buffet, but we also have a cup of water in the bathroom. Bern will drink from that before the dish in the kitchen. If I don’t refill it before bedtime I hear her fwapfwapfwap pawing (claws extended) until I get up and do so. She also joins me in the shower, sitting on the ledge and then drinking from the faucet afterwards. Cleo just loves water. She adores being bathed. Not dried though. She will jump into the bathtub with me.
In talking aout whether cats are “pawed” or not - Bern is definately right pawed. Cleo is ambidextrious. Both kitties like holding our hands. If I’m petting them they’ll reach out and place their paw in my hand and just leave it there. Awwwwww.
I have three cats. Glenn, the oldest, who is diabetic, went on a hunger strike last year when he decided he was sick of our second-oldest cat, Allessandro’s, special “urinary health” food, which we’d been feeding to all three for simplicity’s sake. (We found out he was diabetic when we took him to the vet because he’d lost a lot of weight and pulled out a clump of fur itching himself.) He prefers now to be fed on the floor or sometimes by hand. He can’t have his favorite people food treats anymore - he loved to lick the bottom of my ice cream dish, and was known to steal homemade PB cookies off the table if left unattended - except cheese, which is now his twice-daily insulin treat/bribe, and the occasional bit of tuna or roast chicken. Sometimes he likes to ‘kill’ his treats, but doesn’t always. When Glenn was a kitten, we fed him from a tiny glass dish on the table so the (now since departed) dog, Shadow, wouldn’t get it. The dog was on a diet, but Glenn would get up on the washing machine, put his head in the dog food bag, and drop bits of food on the floor. He also once jumped on the table, stole a pizza crust off my mother’s plate, and dropped it on the floor to Shadow - and looked very upset that Shadow didn’t save any for him.
Riverbed, our youngest and only female kitty, likes pasta and canned vegetables. Then again, she’ll eat just about anything that will fit into her mouth and isn’t nailed down. As our vet said, you would never know that this cat has an OVERactive thyroid (which she had surgery to correct and is now fine).
Allessandro is king of weird eating habits. He also does the eat-with-the-paw trick, which I always assumed came from his previous home. My friend, with whom he lived for the first 8 months of his life, had numerous cats and ferrets. In the morning she would fill a big cast iron skillet with kibble, and that was all they got all day. I figured it was probably the only way he could get food with all those other critters sticking their faces in the pan, but he still does it after more than ten years of never-empty bowls shared with only two other cats.
We used to have one of those combo dishes where the food and water bowls are connected, and he would stand on the far side of the dish and pull the food toward himself, dumping it in the water. Then he’d pull it out and eat it off the mat, or sometimes lift it to his mouth in the palm (?!) of his paw. He is part Maine Coon, but I always thought they were called that because they look a bit raccoonish, not because they wash their food… We now have separate food and water bowls, but he still stands on the water bowl side of the mat and pulls the food out directly onto the mat and eats it without washing it. He also tries to steal Glenn’s food with his paw if Glenn is eating on the floor. He’s not much of a people-food eater though he does like the occasional bit of tuna, he’s just as likely to turn his nose up at it sometimes though. He’s also a plastic bag licker/chewer. I’ve never seen him drink water from his paw, but one time I heard him squeaking in the kitchen (he doesn’t meow, he makes these squeaky ‘eeeeee’ or ‘ooooo’ noises) and went out to see why, and he was dipping his paws in the dish and flicking the water everywhere, squeaking his head off for no apparent reason. Another time he was sitting on the table, staring at the light on the ceiling, squeaking. We think that may have been his coyote imitation, but he’s only done it once. He also did a call-and-response thing one time along with Little Richard on TV, which was hilarious. Sometimes I read in the tub, and on several occasions he would sit on the edge of the tub and flick water on my book, but he hasn’t done that in ages.
Yep, kitties are fun.
A couple of my cats will on occasion pull the food out of the dish with their paws then eat it from the floor, or they dip their paws in water and then lick the water off but most of the time they eat normally.
My most idiosyncratic cat is my deaf cat, Marlee, who is still under a year old and has been rather sickly. She has recurring upper respiratory infections and has had oral infections. I had to pull several of her teeth due to the infections and she sometimes has trouble eating. I try to feed her extra if I see she isn’t eating well. I will give her some canned food and she looks interested but she won’t eat it unless I hand feed it to her. She has even trained my boyfriend to hand feed her, too.
I have thoroughly enjoyed everyone’s kitty stories. Thanks for starting the thread, Q.E.D., and thanks for everyone’s contributions!
Mine eats fairly normally but then she compulsively “buries” the food bowl, usually upending it all over the place. (Please note that she never buries anything she does in her kittybox). She will go to incredible lengths to find something to cover it up with - drag over a dishtowel, fish a receipt out of the trash, anything. Bury. Bury. Bury. Drives me batshit. Then? About 40% of the time, she throws up :rolleyes: I call her Scarf n’ Barf.
Luna stalked a treat once. It was hilarious to watch.
Katya does that, too. She does meow when I take her to the vet, and very rarely at other times, so we know that she can meow. She just prefers to squeak and coo.