Why does a cat take her food out of her bowl and take it somewhere else to eat and talks to it while she’s eating?

You’ll see this quite often. If a domestic cat takes her food out of her food bowl and takes it somewhere else, even a short distance, it is the behaviour of an inherited, wild cat trait to take food to a safe place to protect it. And if she talks while eating it could mean one of two things (a) she is defending her ‘prey’ or (b) she is enjoying her food!

My Cat

The essential behaviour described here is taking prey to a safe place which is part of feline hunting behaviour. Wild cats often take their prey to a safe place where they eat it and then return to it at a later date. They also bury prey (e.g. the mountain lion).

When a domestic cat brings in a mouse that he has caught you are more likely to see the natural feline wildcat behaviour in action. Firstly, if you try and get the mouse off your cat she might growl at you in order to protect her prey from what she believes is a sibling or a relation and secondly she’ll go to a safe place to eat it. Or she might give it to you!

My cat uses the space under my bed to store and eat his mice. And he has growled at me before when I have tried to save the mouse. He runs away from me which is another example of protecting ‘prey’.

If a cat takes their cat food from their bowl to a safe place all the time it would indicate to me that she is anxious and perhaps living in an environment which creates that anxiety all the time. The anxiety may be due to other cats either inside or outside, a dog, or perhaps people. There may be strangers coming and going for example or, whatever the reason, the house simply isn’t calm and secure enough.

A remote possibility is that the cat has the onset of early dementia creating confusion but I doubt this would be the case. The bottom line is that this is an inherited trait and an example of how close the domestic cat is to their wild ancestor.

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