Uncovering the Mystery

Many cat owners have witnessed firsthand a variety of strange behaviors displayed by their pets, often on a regular basis. Without the magic of translation, it leaves one, or many for that matter, wondering. Why do these animals, domesticated centuries ago, still display behaviors that simply dont make sense to us, their human counterparts? One such mysterious behavior has kept people guessing, and they have done a pretty good job at coming up with some plausible explanations. So why do cats bury their food?

Pet owners around the world have compiled scenario upon scenario, depicting what they see as their cats trying to cover their food. Some say the cat will only cover wet food. Others, contrarily, only witness the covering of dry food. Some people regularly watch their cats scratch at the base of their food bowls, in what appears to be an imaginary covering of the food, similar to a dog digging in the ground to hide a bone. Then still, there are counts of cats scratching also at the adjacent wall near their food bowls, as if to break away a piece of the wall and let the wall shedding do the covering. Some cats will go to a greater extreme of actually finding articles of clothing or towels to drag over to their food, completely covering their dishes.

One popular belief about this behavior is that the cats are covering their food because of distaste. They believe the behavior is an attempt to communicate to their owners that the food provided is simply not to their liking. This theory would support the scenarios depicting the separated food coverings; where some cats cover only wet food, and some cats only cover dry food. There are, however, nearly equal numbers of cat owners professing distaste of the food being covered as there are suggesting that their cats do indeed enjoy the food they ultimately throw dirt over. This theory is divided too equally to be a universal one. Either way, perhaps you should try out a few different foods to rule this option out.

Another possible explanation to the mysterious food covering would be that some cats are afraid that if they dont hide their food, it will be stolen from them. This answer resonates from many cat owners who have adopted ferals or taken in cats from shelters. These cats often come with a broken past and have had to struggle to survive. There is no telling how the cat had to live before being thrown into a shelter, but it is pretty evident that being caged in a cell without freedom is not an easy road, bringing forth an insecurity that anything can be taken away unexpectedly. In the same regard, food in the wild is not a promised commodity, so when cats hunt, the winnings of such efforts are precious, needing to be buried away like a treasure until it is completely consumed.

Carrying over the previous explanation intertwines with perhaps the most universal and most plausibly accepted suggestion. Cats are still cats. Though domesticated, they still carry a genetic trace of their wild ancestors. They still possess a strongly innate instinctual essence that causes them to simply carry out behaviors that may not even make sense any longer. Just as cats continue to harbor the instinct to hunt, they often respond instinctually to many aspects of daily living, i.e. eating. Some scientists have reflected that covering food is derivative of preceding wild instincts to keep wet food from drying too fast or molding, and to prevent dry food from getting too exposed to the sun. They also suggest scratching up the ground will also keep insects away, along with slightly hiding the food from possible predators. Along these lines, it is accepted that cats are still acting out of shear wild instinct that is encoded in their genetic makeup.

There are millions of cats out there, many who still live in the wild. And though they have been a domesticated animal, a pet in our homes, for centuries, they still have a lineage that cant deny a wild origin. It is an amazing thing to be able to witness the traces of such distant ancestry still vigorously being exercised. And considering cats havent told us their secrets after the hundreds of years weve been companions, chances are we are stuck guessing and theorizing on our own for possibly hundreds more. Thats what makes us human, while they are still happy being cats.