Bored cat plays with food bowl (video)

 This is a funny cat video from the TikTok website. The video is on a loop which gives the impression that this cat is endlessly playing with his stainless steel food bowl in a sign of sheer desperation. However, I'm sure that he plays with it for quite a short time. The rattling of it and the static nature of the cat all adds up to make the video slightly strange and amusing. But perhaps there is a serious side to this feline behaviour. I can't help but think that this chap is bored. Bored to tears with a dull life.

Note: Videos such as this one inevitably stop working over time. If that has happened I'm sorry.

@tiktokcats

How many times did he move the food bowl? 😹😻

♬ original sound - Cats 🐱😍

Or, perhaps, this is his way of asking for food. Maybe it's been trained into him that he requests food by rattling his food bowl a bit like Oliver Twist! Actually, I don't think Oliver Twist did rattle his food bowl but he did offer it up in a polite request.

Bored cat plays with food bowl. Screenshot.

You might ask whether this cat likes the sound that he is making by rattling the bowl. I don't think that that is a viable option. This sort of sound is normally objectionable to a cat. Sharp, metallic sounds are not great for cats. It is difficult to know why he is doing it. It is unusual behaviour. As it is not a sound which he would like, I can only conclude that he is either playing with it to create a toy for himself or to request food, as mentioned.

We know that cats create toys out of ordinary objects by moving them around. The ultimate version of this is when cats push objects off shelves. The object flies through the air to the floor and breaks or bounces around. This animates an inanimate object. It tells me that cats need to be stimulated more often than we perhaps think they do.

A lot of the time cats decorate the household and give the household a soul! But they are programmed to hunt and to be stimulated by prey animals. We owe it to them to provide that stimulation particularly as there are many more full-time indoor cats nowadays than previously. I feel quite strongly that there are far too many bored cats which is why they sleep a lot. They are not actually sleeping; they are simply killing time by resting with their eyes closed.

It is an entirely misconceived notion that domestic cats sleep for 20 hours a day or something like that. They don't. They sleep for a time which is similar to ours. Please play with your cat and challenge them. I know that it can be difficult do that because people are under pressure themselves but we owe them.