Hello I'm Simon, welcome to Simon's Cat Logic, we will be finding out from a cat
expert why cats behave the way they do. Today we're talking about 'Feeding'.
Well, food and getting fed is such an important thing in a cats life that I had to do a film about it.
The one thing I love about this film, it captures a lot of the little
mannerisms that cats do when they're getting fed the way they get under your
feet they get in the way, they're so impatient to be fed. That there's loads
comic value there to use in the film.
Like most animals cats are very clued up into the things that happen immediately before they're fed
cats thrive from routine and they're very clued into our routines, particularly around feeding time.
Some cats are so clever, they can make associations between particular noises and
the association of food, there's one cat I can think of for example that knows
the particular sound of tuna, so the owner had lots of other tins that were
larger tins make a different sound on the work top, compared to the tuna tin that
makes a different lighter sound.
This way the cat knew when the owner was getting the tuna out and would
come running.
Nowadays though it tends to be the sound of opening a pouch or rattling the biscuit tin.
Many owners wonder why their cats jump up on the kitchen worktops.
In the video Simon's Cat - 'Feeding' you can see Simon turn his back away from the cat
whilst he is desperately trying to get the cats food prepared.
Meanwhile Simon's Cat is desperately try to get up there to try and get to the food
you can see the frustration on Simon's Cat's face and it's often because that's where we prepare
their cat food, so that's why the cat's so interested. Equally we may have
other items up on the kitchen worktop such as a freshly cooked chicken that's just too
tempting for that cat.
So what I would recommend is actually preparing the cats food in a different
location perhaps even on the floor close the cats food bowl to stop them jumping
up on the kitchen worktops.
Cats have an aversion to citrus, so be careful
with the sorts of things you use to clean their food and water bowls with
and also most cats really don't like air fresheners particularly citrus
scented ones.
You can make feeding much more fun by giving them items like feeding
enrichment. Now this is where we introduce enrichment toys if you
like, ways of giving cats food other than in their bowls so it's much more
interesting for them so they can use their brains. Now we want to start off
nice and simple like buddy here, he's got a cardboard egg box, as you can see it uses
the cats different senses and also provides mental stimulation and of
course you can see this has got dry food in it, so part of their daily allowance
this is a really easy one to start off with, and you can see here that Buddy's got
the hang of it straight away. You can then build up in complexity of the
enrichment items so from there you could use a toilet roll pyramid. This is where
you've got the sort of inner cardboard tubes from the toilet rolls and you
sellotape them together to form a pyramid and then you put some of their
dry food into the tubes. Now with feeding enrichment it is important to actually
show the cat how to use it, so just pop your fingers inside the tubes
pour out the biscuits, give it to the cat, you do that for a couple of minutes and
sit back and let the cat, sort of tip their head and put their paw into
the tubes, it is a lot of fun
trust me it's worth it.
Just yesterday Jess was so impatient to get fed, as she's got a bit older she's got
more greedy, she wants food all of the time and she's started jumping up onto the
counter to almost snatch the food before I have a chance to put it down.
This happened after I made the film, it was like seeing my films coming to
life which is very strange.