My cat has OCD

jkat62

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We have a beautiful 2 yr old female Tonkinese cat that we rescued as a kitten. I have had several cats in my life but this one exhibits a behavior that I have never seen before. Whenever she is around food , be it people food, the dog's food or even her own food she circles the dish and scratches around it like she is in her litter pan. It is like she is trying to bury it or something. This weird scratching usually only lasts for a couple minutes or so but sometimes as long as 10 minutes. She also does this sometimes around the water bowl too. I volunteer at a local no kill shelter with 96 cats and have seen some strange behaviors but never this scratching thing. Does anyone else have a cat that does this ? Why do they do this ?
 

lil maggie

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I use to have a cat that did that also. Maggie only does this to the bowl of dry dog food when she passes by it IF the dog left any which isn't often. I know that in the wild, cats cover up anything they've left behind like food and feces because of predators. All cats cover up their stinky mess but not all do this with food. Maybe some cats have stronger 'wild' insticts.
 
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jkat62

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Thats funny because where we first noticed this "burying" was around the dogs food bowl and it just carried over to her food and any people food after that. Yesterday my wife got groceries and set the bags on table, Biggie jumped up on table to investigate and started her scratching.
 

alleygirl

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Riley does this to his wet food plate if he doesn't finish it all in one sitting. He seems to be burying it so he can come back later.
 

darkmavis

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Wow that's really interesting, I never thought about it really, but Genever almost always does 1, maybe 2, scratches by her food dish after she's done eating. So, pretty lazy at 'burying' her food, but she sure makes up for it when she spends 5-10 or more minutes in the litterbox at a time... sigh.


I think it's funny your cat does it even with a bag of groceries!
 
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