This is what I would call a popular topic. It is not a serious subject but, that said, people are interested to find out why their cat uses his paw to eat and drink. It is not usual to see this. You would say it is quite rare, in fact. I have not seen answers to the question in books or on the internet. A reader of this short article may have seen something that makes better sense than me, but I will try and answer the question as I write this.
Food
All domestic cat behavior stems from wild cat behavior although it can be substantially modified through domestication. There are only two ways that the domestic cat eats commercially manufactured food:
- By putting his face into it or rarely as questioned;
- putting his paw in the food and scooping a small amount up and licking it off his paw.
[There are other ways to eat food when the domestic cat catches prey such a bird (plucking the feathers if the bird is large) or a mouse; head first.]
The second way is safer than the first. It is a more cautious way to eat because the face is not trust into the food. It is akin to the way a domestic cat prods and pushes about a dying mouse that he has caught rather than kill it immediately with a killing-bite.
When a cat does this it can be as a precautionary measure to avoid being bitten by prey. Domestic cats are out of practice in respect of catching prey and sometimes play safe and use their paws to push and poke small rodents.
It would seem to me that picking up food in the paw is an extension of this instinctive behavior. It may happen more with cats who are less sure of themselves i.e. less confident.
There may also be a female cat element to this. Female farm cats may bring prey back to their den to play with it, but a better description is that she is killing prey in front her offspring to teach them.
Obviously supermarket cat food is not prey but it is a prey substitute. The instinctive behavior in some cats to use there paws and claws to handle “prey” in this way may originate in a cautious approach to dealing with prey and may have also developed into a way to test food in the same that prodding a mouse around is testing the prey for life.
Water
Sometimes cats scoop up water in one of their paws and drink it off their paw. Often it is the left hand because although cats are either left or right-handed I think you will find that by a small margin the majority of domestic cats are left-handed. It appears to be an action that allows the cat to sample the water, to test it and taste it. It is a cautious approach to drinking and much less efficient than placing the tongue directly into the water.
As it is less efficient and slower there must be some other benefit as a trade off. I would suggest that the benefit is to play safe and test the water before indulging in full-blown drinking with the tongue.
Link to original photo.
You’re welcome.
I also have some hypothesis involving the primary purpose of a cat’s tail, and the cognitive “Dunbar” limit in how cats view and relationship with their human caretakers.
Interesting animals.
Also, I just reread my original comment and must apologize for it’s readability.
I will strive to improve punctuation in the future.
Thanks a lot R for adding your very interesting and useful comment. I’ll think on it.
Cats and humans share a common “problem” if you will, that our other friend the domestic dog (usually) doesn’t. That is the physical size of our muzzles are insufficient to view while eating, making it difficult to gage the distance and location of food in relation to our mouth.
The cats instinctive solution is a highly developed sense of touch on the whiskers and the tip of their nose so much so that they have friction ridges on them the way humans do on their hands. This allows them to touch their food and get a definitive idea of where the food is.
Humans bypass the problem by grabbing food with our more easily visualized front “paws” and using our kinesthetic sense to guide it to our mouth.
It is not inconceivable that, given the cats ability to use mirror neurons to understand the behavior of other animals and the close proximity to humans eating with their front paws that some might try to mimic human eating behavior and, finding utility in it (such as remaining in an upright and ready posture or not having to dip its nose into something wet or moist) would adopt this eating method.
This is my hypothesis anyway.
Fantastic. Cats are smart. Just make sure the milk is not milk for humans because it contains lactose and cats are lactose intolerant. You can get milk for cats. Thanks for visiting.
My cat likes to help himself to milk. I didn’t appreciate him lapping from the milk jug so I started to use a tall narrow one to foil him. So he switched to using his paw to scoop up the milk!
Hi Nancia. I think all cats have the potential to be crazy about water because where there is water there is prey – animals to eat – and the domestic cat is a wild cat at heart. Thanks for sharing Nancia.