Cat Chat Feline Forum

I have a drawer full of ceramic bowls for the cats and dogs, ranging from Wedgwood seconds to cheapo IKEA, but now that both cats are on renal food decided that what I really needed was something partitioned, so that it was easier to offer them more than one food at a time and see how much they were eating. The safe space which both cats can reach but the dogs cannot is limited - no room for two bowls or the fancy double ones. Both cats prefer shallow dishes that don't catch their whiskers. Not plastic, and must go through the dishwasher. I eventually found the perfect thing - stainless steel catering vegetable dishes in the 20cm size! Not expensive (although the postage is a bit steep), and exactly the right size for the space, and to feed a cat or two. And the cats seem to like them, too.

Between your perfect food bowls and Ruth perfect drinking bowl, what a team!

Sounds like the microchip feeder bowls if I'm honest though I don't think they do the divider one in the stainless steel.

having just bought a job lot of 6 bone china saucers on ebay for under £2 each, including postage, I am really up for alternatives to cat bowls

Back when my Mum was still alive, my sister was down visiting one time and realised that our Mum was using her normal dessert bowls for her puddings and for the cat's food. Sara was straight down to the charity shop and came back with 6 ceramic dessert bowls that were dishwasher safe and with a rather garish pattern of yellow flowers on them so there was no mistaking them for our Mum's normal white bowls. They did get used, but I'm still not sure if Mum kept them just for the cat or just used both sets for both her and the cat. In the end they went through a dishwasher after being used for either one, so i doubt there was any real danger to cat or human. In the end I'm sure I'm not alone letting the cats carry out a rough tongue cycle on our dinner plates before they get washed.

Ah - the pre-dishwasher cycle! I know one or two people who run a separate load for animal dishes - can't see why, when the reason for running it hot is to sterilise everything.

The girls have proper cat bowls (the majority have been donated over the years, i haven't bought many), Lucy's are all human bowls though - I use stoneware tapas dishes for her biscuits, and broke one last week, they came from the Range but when I went on Fri, they were discontinued, called in the charity shop yesterday and they had a pile of them, she let me have 2 for £1, if I'd got a similar size cat one, I'd have paid about £4! I do wash cat dishes separate to mine, and they have their own sponge, even though Lucy licks most of my plates before they get washed, I do have separate cutlery for the cats too

I confess to having developed a form of highly selective OCD whereby things need to match. None of it ever needs to be clean or locked or any of the other things normally thought of as OCD but unmatching things niggle badly, most notably stationery and plates and cutlery. Otherwise, I would gladly use some assortment of saucers from jumble sales. Actually, I lie, because one thing I could never hack was food being licked off over the back of the plate. No problem with them taking it out of the bowl to put it in front on the mat and eat from there, but falling down the back irks me.

So I am sort of glad of the mega expense of microchip feeders, because although I don't like them being plastic and resent the money and so on, at least the food is fresh, safe from the dog, and different diets can be given to each cat to graze on through the day.

Now - I don't know if Molly has caught my odd form of OCD but I brought out Boo's feeder with the intention of keeping Molly's dry in it and her wet in her own one. But despite reprogramming it for her, cleaning it again, and even swapping places, she won't go to the one on the left, hers has always been on the right and that's that. She doesn't even like me putting it in the middle of the space, it has to go on the right. I've heard of worse. A friend of mine had four cats and two double bowls, one pink and one silver. The cats ate lined up in order but if she should accidentally swap over the pink and the silver bowls left to right, well then none of the four cats would eat - not a single cat of the four would eat if the dishes were put down on the wrong side.

to be honest, the girls have bowls in matching pairs, and they have to match for each meal, I do have OCD for certain things

Yes to the tongue cycle, though Molly only very occasionally deigns to do this and then only for ice cream or cereal.

It's the dog, really. He has his own coffee mug now, so that my mother isn't put off when she visits, but what she doesn't know doesn't hurt her.

When a cat has licked something off my finger, I give it a wipe and get on with my life. But when the dog licks my hand it needs a wash before I do anything significant. I justify this in my head by cats being clean animals whereas dogs eat and roll in all manner of unsavoury substances, but is there really any difference?

The next time Molly goes to the litter tray and then lifts her back leg to give herself a good clean afterwards, think about just how clean a cats tongue is.

Ruth B wrote: ↑Sun May 23, 2021 5:17 pm The next time Molly goes to the litter tray and then lifts her back leg to give herself a good clean afterwards, think about just how clean a cats tongue is.

I know! But the same saliva doesn't stay in their mouth all the time though, does it? If you have a piece of toast at breakfast, you can't still taste toast just before lunch? It's ok I know but in my mind a cat's tongue seems cleaner than a dog's, I know it probably isn't really.