Scratching around food??!

Does anyone know what it means when a kitten scratches around her food. Like she's trying to bury it. My kitten scratches my kitchen tile and eventually flips her water bowl every time! It's the same motion like when shes in the litterbox and covering up her business. Just Curious

Your kitten is trying to bury her food. It's a natural instinct for cats to cover their leftover food so that other cats cannot smell (and eat their food). That's what the big wild cats do and it's no different for house cats either. I, personally, find it adorable when they do that kind of behavior. It's nothing to worry about.

I agree 100%.
My Rocky does this and BF asks "Is he just dumb? Does he not know that he isn't doing anything by doing that?" (as he doesn't really cover the food)

Its plain instinct! He is also the piggy in the house and will eat Lovey's food when he is done so he is just the food lover in the house.

My kitty also does it.. He also stratches the floor after he uses the litter box dont know what that is about though

one of my cats does this... he almost always scratches if i feed him something that he has never had before... usually before he eats. LOL Loveysmummy, my BF says the same thing. then he shakes his head and says "that boy ain't right".

I get really defensive with BF when he calls them...
ok, just Rocky. ..dumb...
He is a silly goofy boy (the cat,..ok, the BF too)

My kitten does the same thing --I call him a neat freak--anything that is out of place - he puts it in a pile---he also scratches all the sides of the litter box so there isn't any "extra" anything on there....we finally tell him to stop and thats enough - everything is clean --and he takes that as his cue and stops.

SDBlondie, Suki, Sylvester, Patches & Puddy Kat

I've always felt that the scratching around food was saying 'I've had enough of this garbage - put it in the litter box'. But then some of the other ideas here make at least as much sense :-)!

That's interesting. I kind of figured he wanted to save his food for later. She does look cute doing it.

Yea---I thought that too and this website really has it going on. Now I know that he really does like his food---he just doesn't want it to smell. Lee Ann

Only a few of my cats do this. It's cute though isn't it. I had a cat Angel that used to scratch the air too instead of around the food.

Oddly enough, Oliver scratches next to his water dish like he's digging before he drinks... as for his food, he insists on taking pieces of kibble out with his paw onto the floor instead of eating directly from the bowl... he's also a very avid litter digger - ensuring that every last bit is covered before he shoots out of the box, haha

Our one kitten Chloe does this every night when they get their wet food. I've even seen her "cover up" Iris' food too if Iris leaves any left over (which is rare). We've seen Iris do it once or twice. It's sooo cute!

When my previous kitten's illness was taking its course over some months (dry FIP), I noticed she was pawing around her food bowl more and more. I had talked with the breeder at the time, who said she was just making the motions of burying her food. In retrospect, I think she wanted to eat, but couldn't and maybe she thought she might be able to eat later. Because she never ate very much, it wasn't as apparent to me that she was eating less (until much later).

Willow does this, but I've never seen Buffy do it. We have a placemat under the food bowl, so Willow will occationally get a corner over the food bowl.