Why Cats Like to Eat Alone
That’s right, and I like to eat alone too!
When mom and I decided to start Best Life Pets, we based it on the concept of sharing with you the simple things to give your cat its best life – its most authentic life.
Mom and I believe that if you can make the small lifestyle adjustments that reflect more of our ancestral ways, we can lead a more holistic and sustainable long life. We hope to share and educate about the past to determine the roadmap to the future of a happy and healthy cat home.
Cats Are Solitary Hunters
Getting back to today’s topic, ancestrally while we cats are a social species, we are solitary hunters, meaning we prefer to eat alone. Fast forward to today and most multiple cat households have one general feeding area where we are forced to eat together, sometimes even from the same bowl. UGH!
In spite of the fact that we are not “hard-wired” to do so, some of us cats have resigned ourselves to this dining lifestyle, but many cats have not. While we may have domesticated ourselves to live with you humans, there are certain behaviors that remain the same for over 10,000 years and will never truly adapt to the human’s way. And group dining is one of them.
The result of this dining experience can be very stressful for both the cats and the cat parents in many cases.
Mom reports that many of her conversations with cat owners at events focus on food issues, from picky eaters, to scarf and barf incidences, to bullying at the bowl so one cat never gets their full share, etc. Group dining can actually suppress a cat’s appetite with some eventually suffering some health issues even.
She always starts by asking where and how the cats are fed and have they been to the vet within the last 6 months. Always, without exception she says, the cats are subjected to group feeding.
Cats Should Dine Alone
Keeping it SIMPLE, she recommends that each cat has its own dining spot away from each other aka dining’s version of social distancing.
Mom says that you think we like to dine together because YOU humans like to dine together, and you just figured that us cats must like it too. However, this could not be further from the truth!
In our house, Beau eats in the kitchen and I eat in the bathroom.
Mom figured it out when shortly after adopting Beau, she noticed that he ate in 1-2 minutes and would then start to stalk my bowl, stressing me out.
Since I am a feline gourmand, I like to leisurely dine over 5-6 minutes and I don’t need this juvenile delinquent interrupting my nice meal!
As a result, I had some “scarf and barf” episodes and since I never did that before Beau’s adoption, she decided to give us our own personal dining spot also known as mealtime security!
Mealtime security goes a long way in making us feel secure when eating and very often that one simple shift can reduce the issues and problems caused by group dining in multiple cat homes. Even a small studio apartment can identify a few different dining spots as any corner will do!
Eating alone can improve our dining experience and actually enhance and stimulate our appetite. Beau and I now finish our meals completely in one sitting, no grazing for us either, but that’s another blog for another week!