not eating from the bowl

My second cat Yumosh doesn't eat from the food bowls. She wants her food on the ground and I can't figure out why??

The only reason I can think of is, she is soo much scared of my first cat Minnosh. Minnosh chases her whereever and whenever she sees her. There are 3 food bowls for each of my cats and everyone eats from each bowl. They must somehow be leaving some scented marks on the bowls (do they really??) and this might be why Yumosh doesn't eat from the bowl (because of Minnosh's scent??)

Does anyone have any idea??

My alpha kitty is like that. I finally just decided to use a paper plate instead of my floor and she is perfectly happy to accept that. She wants to eat seperate of the other kitties and it has always been that way.

Thanks hissy.

When I put lots of food in a plate or bowl, the other cats also eat from them. So last night I put a little bit of food in a yogurt lid so that only Yumosh will eat from it (hopefully ) )

It seems to me like Yumosh doesn't eat enough ?? She looks kind of skinny to me. OK not skiny perhaps, but lean. She is actually 9 pounds and healthy. She has that rectangular and bony body structure, like a Maine Coon (and beautiful long and straight legs also ).

Do you think 9 pounds is too little for a cat who is 17 months old?

I used to have a cat that was the same way. The cat would use her paw to drag some of the food out of the bowl and onto the floor where she would eat it. At the time I felt that maybe she disliked the sensation she got when her whiskers touched the sides of a feeding dish.

When my cat Fallon lived at the clinic I work at she used to never eat directly out of her bowl. She would dip her paw in the dish and scoop out kibble by kibble and bring her paw to her mouth and that is how she would eat.

The funny thing is when I adopted her and brought her home she eventually stopped eating with her paw and began eating normally from the bowl. I'm still kind of stumped on that one.

9 pounds is a nice average weight. One of mine is about that size now. The one I had before that was 17 pounds but he was a great big boy.

My cat, Isabel, is a messy eater. What I did with her was go off to a second hand store and buy some flat plates and I put those on the floor on top of a tray. She now usually only messes on the plate but if she moves she only drops on the tray. Its much easier to wash. I've also got rubber cat mats which also wipe clean easily.

I once cat-sat for a cat that would pick up a single piece of dry food in it's mouth, drop it in it's water bowl, wait a few seconds, and then paw it out onto the floor and eat it. Needless to say, Felix was rather skinny Ivo, on the other hand, is just sloppy. However, she likes to pick the dry pieces up off the floor later-I think she thinks they are special treats!