The Stay at Home Cat Part 2: Hunting for Food
Cats are hunters. I didn’t have to tell you that did I? In the wild, felines spend the majority of their waking hours seeking food. They use their minds, their bodies, all of their senses. While hunting, they are engaged, interested, and focused. They forage and hunt ALL DAY. Wild cats know that nothing is free.
Indoor cats rarely experience the thrill of hunting. Food acquisition is a matter of sliding off the couch to waddle over to a bowl of kibble and chow down. There is no thought required, no physical activity, no challenge and it’s over in 5 minutes or less. When the bowl is empty they might have to expend some energy seeking the food-giver (you) at any hour of day or night to demand food (and you get up and feed him don’t you!). Or maybe your cat has one of those overflowing, never-empty bowls and the cat grazes all day long.
Let’s get this straight--cats are hunters, not grazers.
Here’s a reminder of The Goal:
To provide a challenging, fun, safe and exciting indoor environment for your cat; one that stimulates your cat’s natural instincts and curiosity, redirects energy used for unwanted behavior and encourages mental and physical activity.
Ok, so how do we stimulate the housecat to hunt--to use its mind, its body and its senses to find food? First, throw away the cat food bowl. The food bowl is too predictable, too easy and an uninteresting way to find food. If you take my advice, food dispensing toys (containing small amounts of dry food, not treats--most pet cats are overweight anyway) will soon become your indoor cat’s best friends.
There are a variety of these items available on the market. Here some good ones to choose from:
The staple of food dispensing toys for cats is the treat ball. The best treat balls are adjustable so that you can control the amount of food that comes out. It should be challenging but not impossible to get food out. The Slim Cat is my favorite of these. The non-adjustable ones are often too easy; many cats will empty them in a few minutes.
If the adjustable treat ball is too easy for your cat, try the Buster Cube. It’s made for dogs but some cats are just too crafty for the treat balls (my cats are so crafty they use the large dog Buster Cube).
Try out some different types of dispensers such as Pavlov’s Interactive Treat-and-Food Dispenser and Kitty Kitchen Food and Treat Dispenser. These will force your cat to figure out new methods of retrieving food.
Get a few of these products and every day load 2 different food dispensers with 1 dry meal (about ¼ cup dry is enough for most adult cats). Hide each food dispenser in a new place in the home. Your cat will have to forage around the house to find the item. This will begin stimulate your cat’s hunting instinct by forcing him to use his senses as a cat would in nature. Once the cat finds the food dispenser it will have to think and spend some time getting the food out. You can also leave small amounts of kibble in several little surprise bowls in places where your cat can search them out during the day. By the way, you can use these methods at night for cats who get the midnight munchies and would otherwise try to wake you for a meal.
If your cat only eats canned food I have a solution for that too. Invest in some of timed, portion-controlled meal feeders. There are relatively simple and inexpensive models like this one, or more complex models like this one that will even feed your pet for a short vacation. Make sure you use feeders that are equipped with freeze packs to keep your pet’s canned food fresh. As with the treat dispensers, put these feeders in new places in the home every day. You can even coordinate a radio music alarm to go off one minute before the feeder opens. Your cat will learn that when the music starts it’s time to find the feeder and wait for it to open.
So liberate Fluffy from the bottomless bowl and awaken the latent hunter inside! With food dispensing toys, what was previously a five minute event requiring no thought becomes a half-day foraging expedition with the benefit of mental and physical stimulation. Your cat also will eat smaller meals, have some fun and take breaks in between hunting expeditions to nap and to interact with some of the other environmental enhancing items that I will be discussing in my next blog.
--Dr. Park
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Dr. Park practices small animal medicine in Fairfield, CT and is a regular contributor to Wag Reflex.
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