New Cat Owner with Behavior Question

Hello. I'm a first-time cat owner who has basically grew up around dogs all of her life. In July 2003, I took in a female cat my sister had found as a skinny, declawed, stray running around her neighborhood in June 2003. Due to my sister's busy schedule, she wasn't able to take care of her so I now am the fortunate owner of Charlotte!!

In August, I had taken Charlotte to the vet to get her shots and to get spayed (she went into heat after I had her 2 weeks). The vet thought at that time she was about 1 year old because she had adult teeth. Anyway, she's been a great addition to my life and I haven't had any problems with her except when she #1) went into heat and marked her territory, and #2 when I tried to slowly change her litter from regular clay to Feline Pine.

I do have a question about behvavior. I have observed her jumping up onto the kitchen table and scratching over my slice of home-made wheat bread as though she's trying to cover it up. I have observed her doing this at her food bowl (dry food) and of course in the litter box. I was thinking about "trying" to switch from her clay litter to Swheat Scoop. However, I think Charlotte is telling me that wheat should be covered up? I am just not sure if it's because she thinks it stinks like feces or if it smells good like her dry food and she is protecting it. Any thoughts?

Thanks

This is just a behavior/trait they do in the wild. They bury their food (for later) and they also bury their waste. Several of my cats do this, and what I have done is get a large bandanna, place it under their food bowl. When they are done eating, they scoop, the bandanna flies over their food, they turn away satisfied that they did good.

Welcome to the site! How wonderful of you to take in Miss Charlotte. And what kind of previous owner has her declawed and now spayed??????

I'll go ahead and move this to the Behavior Forum since it is a behavior question.

I think there are idiosyncracies some cats have. My Gracie loves to chew on thin wires and strings. So I cover or keep wires out of her reach and keep shoes with laces out of her reach.

So if Charlotte has a burying idiosyncracies, it's not that hard to cover your bread. The hate the feel of aluminimum foil, or there are cake plates.

Maybe my question is misleading. I am trying to figure out if my cat likes or dislikes wheat because I was interested in changing her litter from Tidy Cats Regular Clay to Swheat Scoop which is a wheat-based product. I keep my bread in a plastic container and she was only scratching at it when I had left the kitchen table briefly to do something. I basically left the bread "unguarded" until I returned to eat it. She's never actually tried to eat the bread though.

I am begining to think my cat cannot possibly use Swheat Scoop because she cannot, in theory, bury the litter itself. The whole point of litter is to have the litter itself cover up the feces or urine. Does that make any sense?

then the answer isn't that complex. Try the swheat scoop, if she is scooping up wheat, then scooping up wheat litter should not be a problem for her? If she doesn't bury her waste, switch back to what you used before.

Perhaps I am missing something here. Cats will bury two things when they live in the wild- their kills, and their waste. If she is scooping at a slice of wheat bread, then she should scoop wheat cat litter.

Chances are her attraction to wheat may be irrelevant. It is more likely the bread smells like food, so she did what a cat does with uneaten food: bury.

The way to transition to a new kind of litter is to do it gradually; mixing small amount of new with the old, and over a period of days gradually increasing amounts of new.

Welcome to thecatsite!

One of my cats scratches around her food. I never knew what it was about either!

Hissy,
What a wonderful idea of the bandana.
Donny has taken to "covering" his food. I didn't know what that was about. But I do have to be careful not to let any dust bunnies accumulate or he will scoop those over his food.
I'll give the bandana idea a try.

Donny's mom

Welcome to the site and how wonderful of you to have adopted a homeless kitty