Burying or 'Caching' Their Food

The Phantom Digging

Many cats, after eating — or sometimes instead of eating — will paw and scrape at the floor around the bowl, at a nearby wall, or at thin air, in the unmistakable motion of covering something over. There is nothing there to move, and the food stays exactly where it was, yet the cat goes through the whole ritual with great conviction. It is one of those behaviours that makes perfect sense once you know where it comes from.

Caching: A Hunter's Habit

In the wild, cats are hunters who cannot always finish a kill in one sitting, and a wild cat that has eaten its fill will often scrape earth, leaves or snow over the remains to hide them. Caching food this way keeps the leftovers out of sight and smell of scavengers and rival predators, and saves them for later. It also keeps the area clean and scent-free, which matters to an animal that does not want to advertise its presence. Your well-fed house cat has inherited that programming intact, and a bowl of food it has not finished can trigger the very same 'cover it up and save it' routine — even though the kitchen floor offers nothing to cover it with.

Should You Worry?

For the most part this is completely normal and rather charming, and needs no action at all. Sometimes, though, it carries a message: a cat that food-scrapes enthusiastically at a fresh, untouched bowl may be telling you it is not keen on that meal, that the food is stale, or that it has simply had enough — the feline equivalent of pushing a plate away. It is worth taking a bowl that is left buried as a gentle hint about portion size, freshness or flavour. The behaviour itself is not a health problem. What would warrant a closer look is a genuine change in appetite alongside it — a cat that suddenly stops eating, loses weight, or seems unwell — in which case it is the eating, not the scraping, that needs a vet's attention.