Belle has started recently scratching at the mat her bowls sit on, We read this as an attempt to cover her food but we don't know if this is telling us anything such as she is being underfed or so on - any ideas?
I've had cats previous & have only encountered this once. My current cat does this, it's just a natural thing some cats do. I always sing when she does it, Ella wants to save it for later..... that's exactly what she wants to do!
The only thing annoying about it is when she pushes the mat & it gets on the food & partly covers it, that's when it bugs me, other than that, she's just a cat
I've had several cats do this in the past. Chula, one of my current cats, scratches the floor near her food on occasion but I've never been able to figure out why she does it sometimes and not others. As @msserena says, cats who do this are just being cats. It's an instinctive behavior.
In terms of worrying if Belle is getting enough food: My experience has been that this is not a signal that a cat is hungry. Hunger signals include meowing, kneading, head butting, gentle bites, winding around your feet and staring at you. The thing they all have in common is that the goal of each behavior is to get the attention of the food bearing human, sometimes in a very persistent way. Scratching the rug is more of a lone activity.
It's pretty normal for them to do that. My boy does that when he does not finish his food. Just the other day, I left his empty can on the kitchen counter while washing up his dish and he went up and walked past it, he smelled it and immediately did the covering up action and walked away.
I find it comical to see him do that every time :lol3: