Full-time indoor cats should be fed with puzzle feeders for mental stimulation

There really is an obligation on cat owners nowadays to use puzzle feeders to feed their cats. That wouldn't have been the case not that long ago but nowadays it is said that up to 63% of domestic cats in America are kept indoors full-time for a number of reasons, the most important of which is the cats' safety and security.

RELATED: I have written about this before but Google failed to pick it up hence this cross-post.

That's obviously a big benefit for the cat but set against that there must be detriments, downsides and in the case of full-time indoor cat it is mental stagnation, boredom, inactivity, lack of stimulation and lack of environmental enrichment. These have potential health problems.

I know that I am going on but you can't just close the doors and windows on a domestic cat for the rest of their lives and expect things to carry on as normal. You have to stimulate your cat because they lose all the usual simulations that they obtain from the outdoors once you keep them indoors full-time.

And one way to enrich the environment of domestic cats is to insist that they are fed with puzzle feeders. These are feeding devices which make it a challenge to the cat to get at the food.

And studies have found that for captive wild cat species, puzzle feeders have proved to be successful in creating an environment for them which at least to a small extent provides the cat with some semblance of a normal life.

In this study, a small wild cat species called a fishing cat was fed live fish. When this happened the cat in question reduced their sleeping time by 60%. That means they were more active than normal. The cat showed increased hunting behaviours and they used their enclosure more effectively and more dynamically. They were turned on emotionally and these benefits persisted for about two days after they were no longer given live fish up to a maximum of eight days of improved behaviour.

An Asiatic leopard cat was fed four times per day and three times per day with food hidden in small piles of brush to help stimulate natural hunting behaviours and they found that when the food was hidden multiple times the cat's exploratory behaviour increased from 5.5% to over 14%.

And their pacing i.e. stereotyped behaviours, which is highly indicative of boredom, reduced.

You can bring that study forward to the domestic cat in a home. Full-time indoor cats live somewhat like captive wild cat species in zoos in my view. There is an acute obligation I feel to try and entertain cat kept indoors and one way is to employ a puzzle feeder. In fact, there should be two or three different types in the home.

In addition to that the environment can be improved for the cat by adding climbers and high platforms et cetera. The key is to increase the number of climbing devices so the cat can rest at a high level. Cats need to move radically as we all know.

But this article is about puzzle feeders and they are cheap and effective. I sincerely hope that people try them.

As I mentioned, one study says that 63% of all indoor cats in the United States are kept indoors full-time. That may be too high a figure but it is at least 40-50% and growing year-on-year. It is beyond the time when there needs to be an emphasis on environmental enrichment and mental stimulation of full-time indoor domestic cats.

It is ironic that cat owners keep their cats indoors full-time for their health. And many of them in a survey say that there cat are healthy both physically and mentally when they keep them indoors but I think they are incorrect. How do you assess a domestic cat's mental health and well-being? Through observation? You don't really know what's in the mind of a domestic cat. 

What we can judge through common sense is that a cat able to express their natural desires and motivations is going to be mentally healthier and more content than one who cannot do this. 'Hunting' food with a cat puzzle goes a little way to also feeding a cat's natural motivations.

And keeping cats indoors full-time without any attempt to substitute what they are missing when allowed outside to hunt, walk on wet grass, climb trees, smell the air, meet other cats and meet wildlife is a derogation of the duty of a good cat caregiver.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Scientists say that domestic cats prefer to get free meals rather than work for them! Big deal.

I really can't understand what the UC Davis scientists are getting at in this study, which concluded that cats prefer to get free meals rather than work for them. They say that cats are unusual in that they prefer to eat from a bowl, given to them, rather than use an interactive feeder which makes it harder to get at the food. This is an invite for cat haters to say that cats are lazy good-for-nothings.

My cat using an interactive puzzle feeder. He is going against the grain in this activity according to the UC Davis study.

They say other animals, even giraffes, prefer the challenge of trying to get to food i.e. work for it, and don't like it served up. I find it extraordinary and I find it even more extraordinary that the scientists have spent time to come up with something which is very obvious.

Domestic cats have been domesticated for 10,000 years. They have become accustomed to feeding off bowls provided by their human caretaker. The domestic cat has been trained to eat from a bowl. They have learned to ask for food with a meow. This is how they interact with their human companions. It's a form of mutual training. The cat training the human to provide food and the cat eating food largely when and how the human desires.

So, what do you expect? You cannot expect a cat to prefer to use a puzzle feeder unless there is some other benefit in using it. Interestingly, my cat at the moment prefers to use an interactive, puzzle feeder rather than eating dry cat food from a bowl (see above). However, there is a good reason; his dry food bowl is on the kitchen counter. He has to jump up to it, whereas, his puzzle feeder is on the kitchen floor. It has to be because it's a ball and he pushes it around which allows pellets of dry cat food to fall out.

I think that animals find the route of least resistance when they are looking for food, given the choice or opportunity. The same applies to people. And what is strange is that in the write-up of this study they say that a body of research shows that 'most species' including, as mentioned, giraffes and wolves prefer to work for their food. But these are wild animals. How can you compare wild animals with domestic animals? I don't think you can, certainly not in this context.

Perhaps the write-up is inadequate or incomplete. But for me, this study is hopeless and lacks common sense. It lacks accuracy. The scientists say that domestic cats aren't lazy. But they also say that the reason why cats prefer to freeload for their food is unclear. How can it be unclear? Am I missing something? The reason why they freeload for food is because it is easier to get their meal that way.

Cats don't think rationally but they know how to get a meal more easily.

Associated: Contrafreeloading and the domestic cat - this is the same story but written up in an entirely different way. The lead author for this study is Mikel Delgado, a cat behaviorist and research affiliate at UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.