Your cat’s behavior can be complicated, Luckily, you know how to fix it.
You’re here to assess yours, find out what makes her behave this way, and help her achieve balance between her Behavior and behavior. If your cat seems anxious or prone to worry, feeding her can take priority over her other behaviors.
So, why does my cat try to bury her food? Cats are naturally clean animals and have a preference for eating in clean environments.
So, when your cat feels uncomfortable about eating in front of her litterbox, she may try to hide it by burying it and covering it with dirt or sand when she’s not around. This may help to mask the scent of her urine and feces from other animals and humans.
However, this behavior can actually lead to health problems for your cat because it may shorten the life of your cat’s litterbox and make her more prone to urinary tract infections.
Contents
Why Does My Cat Try to Bury Her Food?
They Don’t Like It!
If your cat doesn’t like the new food you’re giving her, she may hide her food or act finicky about eating it.
This is comparable to how they bury their feces to avoid predators; therefore, they don’t eat their food right away because they might be eating it for somebody else.
Like To Be Clean
Cats are most likely doing this to hide their litterbox odors to cover up the scent of her kitty litter and urine to avoid other animals and humans from coming into contact.
This cleaning is mostly self-grooming, but it also allows her to get her paws and nose dirty when she digs in the dirt and sand.
Cats may require daily brushing, bathing and nail clipping as your veterinarian recommends.
Cats that are brushed and bathed regularly don’t feel the need to clean themselves as often, so they find more ways to have fun and ways to express their natural behaviors.
Keep the Odor Hidden
Cats are carnivores, which mean they only eat meat and some plants, such as catnip.
Food should be covered or buried to keep it from smelling bad, so cats often eat their meals in quiet places where the smell doesn’t waft into the air and embarrass.
To begin with, concealing the fragrance reduces the threat of predators from finding the cat and stealing her food.
Second, it aids in the concealment of litter box odors.
A prey species that smells blood or urine in the great outdoors is more likely to get itself attacked.
Hide Food for Later
Domestic cats may look adorable and fluffy on the outside, but look under the surface and you’ll observe many elements of their wild heritage.
Wild cats also cache food to keep it from going bad and they eat only what they need to survive, whereas many domestic cats eat until they’re full and then find something else to do.
Why Do Cats Scratch Around Their Food?
If you offer your cat huge portions of food that she doesn’t eat immediately, she might bury it for later.
She may even eat only half of the food and bury the rest for later. This helps prevent her from gaining weight and also helps her prevent wasting food when it’s not necessary to eat so much at once.
Hiding food prevents her from overeating and gaining weight too quickly which can lead to many health complications for the rest of her life.
Hiding food also helps the cat prevent wasting her food because sometimes, she may forget where she buried it and dig it up to eat it later when she’s hungry.
Why Do Cats Paw Around Their Food?
Cats’ natural instinct is pawing at the food bowl to clean their paws before eating it.
To hide their tracks and keep others from discovering their location for example, or they might even paw at their food bowl when showing their aggression to show dominance or dissatisfaction.
They may even cover their bowl to prevent other animals from stealing their food, so they actually have to be fed more often.
Why Does My Cat Scratch The Floor After Eating?
When your cat starts scratching the floor after she’s finished eating, it’s a sign that she’s not satisfied with her meal or she is already full and needs more time to digest the rest of the food.
Cats will scratch the floor after every meal and it’s usually a good sign that your cat is feeling healthy and doing well.
What Should You Do If Your Cat’s Behavior Is a Problem?
Caching is a common behavior in cats but there are certain habits that can get out of hand.
However, if your cat is destroying your flooring or your couch by scratching it, it is a problem and you need to know what you should do in such a situation.
Some cats acquire a litterbox aversion due to several reasons such as stress or illness.
This is particularly prevalent in houses with multi-cat families.
They may get obsessed with burying their food and refusal to eat the provided food.
Also Read: Cat Ate Spoiled Wet Food?
Conclusion
Your cat’s behavior is very complex and is influenced by many factors including stress or anxiety about things like her litter box or your presence.
Talking to your veterinarian about your cat’s behavior can shed light on what could be causing her to bury her food and help develop a treatment plan for her.
To avoid attracting predators, a cat can bury her food under the logs and stones and scratch the floor lightly to alert her companions that food is available.
It’s an effort to keep any other cat from eating her food.
Because cats aren’t scavengers, they don’t hide their food as most other predators do.
Even if a cat has never gone outdoors, it can still catch a parasite from outside.
