Should You Elevate Your Cat’s Food?

Elevated pet food dishes are becoming more and more popular, but is this necessary for cats? Since they consume their prey from the ground, why would you need to elevate your cat’s food? Well, we’ve found it to be helpful to 4 of our 6 cats so let me tell you why.

Reasons You May Want To Elevate Your Cat’s Food

• Oliver Twist is 17 years old. While he doesn’t seem to be struggling with arthritis, he is slowing down a little. If your kitty is struggling with joint issues then it can put strain and pain on the muscles and back to lean over to eat. We want Mr. Twister to enjoy his mealtimes, so we elevate his bowl.
• Jack is our 1 year old feisty dude. Most cats lower their entire bodies to the bowl when they eat, but Jack doesn’t do this. He’s still growing and his legs are getting LONG so when he leans over to eat his back end shakes. Since we’re not sure how to train him to lower his body down, we elevate his food dish as well. Now he doesn’t shake anymore.
• Our cat Pooh Bear is a big boy with autoimmune disease. He’s had a history of digestive issues and elevating your cat’s food when they eat has been shown to help with digestion.
• Friday is our sweet girl who has food anxiety about 75% of the time. She doesn’t like to eat around the other cats and she requires me to chase her around the house in order to feed her. When I put her food dish on a couple books she feels more comfortable about eating. I believe this is because she can see her surroundings better than she can when her head is tilted down into her dish. It makes her more comfortable.

Elevating Your Cat’s Food

Our other kitties, Zorro and Madison, eat just fine from the ground so we don’t lift their dishes up. They make really cool elevated food bowls that you can purchase, but we’ve found that using a couple books works great. It works even better for us because our kitties rarely eat in the same location every meal!

Do you elevate your cat’s food? Comment below and let us know if you’ve had success with this or if you have other tricks to offer!

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