Why won't my cat eat from his bowl?

[auroradapwna]

Whenever I feed my cat, he has a habit of taking pieces of his food, moving it either to the floor of the kitchen (where is bowl is) or the living room and eating it off of the floor. I've thought that maybe the bowl isn't big enough or something, but I've even tried putting his food on a little plate and he still does the same thing. Any advice?

 

[goholistic]

Is it a deep bowl? If so, I would suggest a small, shallow (low profile) bowl no more than an inch high. A lot of cats don't like deep bowls. As far as the plate goes, perhaps the plate was to large circumference-wise. 

On a side note, has he been to the vet lately and had his mouth and teeth checked out?

 

[cocheezie]

I find shallow pasta bowls work well and they are easy to find at secondhand stores and cheap. I've had cats that do not like their whiskers touching the sides of the bowl/plate so a pasta bowl works for this. My downstairs cat eats wet out of a large shallow bowl in the kitchen (he's not a great picker-upper of food and the wide shallow bowl helps keep the food off the floor). However, he is of firm belief that special treats (i.e. human food) are best eaten on the dining room carpet. Have never been able to change his mind.

 

[catgirl12]

I have 2 cats and i have the same problem, i suggest that don't put too much food in the bowl so he is not tempted to dump some out ,or just move pieces of food. i have a washable tray under my cats food and water bowl. I suggest getting one because, most of the trays out there have this little hump so all the food that gets dumped out will stay on the tray. So that the cat will have to eat whats on the tray. I hope this advise helped you!

 

[stormi71]

I have read articles stating cats don't like their whiskers touching the side of the bowls, and that some cats don't like plastic bowls as it can cause facial acne. I noticed that Delilah would take bits of wet food out of the bowl as drop it on the floor (she has a PVC placemat under her bowls), but only if her wet food was in a pile in her bowl. I now spread it around the bowl so it's a thin layer (mostly to slow her eating down), and she doesn't take it out of her bowl now. My last cat used to do this if the mouthful he picked up was too much, so he'd drop it onto the floor to take a smaller bite.

 

[potters]

I have a low glass bowl for potters to drink his bottled water from and he refuses but eats his food out of another glass bowl gladly he wants to drink his water from my cup so I got him his own cup hopefully he would stay out of mine and it worked they r very fussy as people we have our likes and dislikes I have found so do they just got to figure out what they like and want that can be hard

 

[malt]

Mama does this with her food, too. I tried to stop her doing it the first couple of times but there's just not reasoning with cats. She eats off of a saucer/small plate, so it's not an issue with the bowl being too deep. She's just weird. One thing that does help is mashing the food up into a paste - they can pick it up when it's in big chunks, but when it's paste they can't really pick it up! As for why they do it, I have no idea. 

 

[42cattier]

Same problem here, not on permanent basis, periodically, had to learn to live with it. My cat has own plastic table for a feeding (his choice, we agreed on this when he was stopped eating at all and started muscle waste). Just wash table afterwards.

Other days he eats from shallow plates.

 

[AbbysMom]

Was your cat ever in a situation where he had to share the bowl with others, such as a shelter or in a foster situation with a lot of other cats?

Many former shelter cats have this behavior. They are used to having to go in, grab food from the bowl and then eat to the side. We've had Abby nine years and she will still take her food and eat off to the side on occasion, but not as much as she used to.