Odd eating behavior

katherine

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Hello--
I am new to this forum, so this is my first posting. I adopted a now five-month old female kitten one month ago. She is adjusting happily to her new environment and is a bundle of grey-furred energy and joy. She learns quickly and is very pleasant and playful.
Recently I noticed a change in her eating behavior. After she has finished eating, she will scrape her paws along the ground around her dish / food tray. It's just like the scraping and covering motion she performs in her litterbox after she's gone to the bathroom (like she's covering up her stool with litter). She eats fine and has a healthy appetite; she just always scrapes to "cover" the floor around her food dish when she's finished eating. I've never seen a kitty do this before. Should I be worried? I'm basically wondering what behavior is driving her to perform this scrape-and-cover litterbox motion outside of her litterbox. (She is fully litterbox trained, by the way).

Any advice welcome!
 

goldenkitty45

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I had a few that did it. Some say its cause they are trying to bury it and save for later or that they don't like it...never really figured it out
 

jenny82

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Welcome to TCS! Don't worry, mine do that too! Another theory is that they may be trying to instinctually bury their leftover food so that others don't come and eat it.
 

solaritybengals

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All of my cats do this regularly or at one time or another. I was surprised to find that before my kittens even started weaning onto food they would still make the burying motion when they smelled food.
 
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katherine

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Thanks to all who answered my post about my kitten's "burying" of her food; I figured it was something instinctual like that.
 
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