Whisker fatigue causes stress and overstimulates their senses. Using a flat bowl or plate will relieve this issue and allow your cat to eat all their food without stress.
You can also search for “whisker fatigue” bowls specifically made for cats.
Not every cat responds the same, or at all, to stress on their whiskers. Just like people, cats have varrying tolerances to stimulus.
Anecdotally, my cats would not finish their food in narrow bowls but do now that they eat from flat bowls.
I can add my own anecdote to this one. One of my cat’s is fine with any bowl because he’s just very food motivated and will do anything to get to his food at feeding time. The other one, when using a more narrow bowl, would often stop eating normally and scoop out the food with a paw. Once I switched to wide flatter bowls, she scarfs it down without pause. It was clearly bothering her.
While cats vary in their preferences and tolerances, it bothers me that so many people just scoff at this idea. We’re caretakers for cats and should do our best to make their lives as reasonably comfortable and enriching as possible. And just because a cat is fine with touching things with their whiskers in some situations doesn’t mean they’re cool with it in others. Cats are often happy to have you scratch behind their ears, but only when it’s invited.
And come on, bowls are cheap. It’s not that big of an inconvenience to get them a bowl that could be more comfortable, even if they’re tolerating it now.
So far the only actual study we have on this says it’s not a real thing. Sure, some cats have different preferences but it’s not like you are torturing your cat with normal bowls and need to run out and buy special ones.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1098612X20930190
If you’re feeding your cat an infinite supply of dry food without a feeding schedule you have bigger things to be concerned about than whisker fatigue.
As an ad libitum cat feeder, 0 issues so far. They eat when they’re hungry
This applies to pretty much every article about animals…it’s just humans putting human stuff on animals for the sake of humans. :/
It happens often in media, but real scientists don’t rely on what they think animals think, instead using objective data like brain activity scans, heartbeat rates etc, often presenting pure data without a conclusion on what they think the animal feels. Those studies will then come to media, where the interviewed scientists will give their thoughts on how they interpret the results, even if it’s obvious that the animal likes/dislikes something. These also exist in media.
Edit: I also want to add that many things are straight up visibly harming the animal and you don’t even need any conclusions. For example if you house a hole-dwelling spider without enough substrate to dig, it will stop eating. This has been confirmed many times, by many owners. It doesn’t matter if it makes them uncomfortable or they feel pain from it, or they are cold, etc, because we know that they stop eating, and that’s a good enough signal that something’s bad.
A vet weighs in on this whole thing and goes over a study that was done on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLrI0eprVr8
TL;DW it’s mostly marketing and fear mongering. Your cat doesn’t care and even with completely natural behaviors (like oh I don’t know, squeezing into prey burrows and clamping their muzzle around mice) they get their whiskers compressed all the time. Whiskers are touch receptors so the idea that they can’t be touched is kind of silly.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=pLrI0eprVr8
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
That really depends on the cat. Mine don’t care whatsoever.
I have a whisker friendly dish and my cat still does this. My cat just likes company when he eats and he’ll meow at you to come join him. He digs in as soon as I sit down with him at his bowl. Just a little weirdo butt.
Not really weird. It’s a survival thing. He wants you to watch over him while he’s vulnerable and eating.
No, whisker fatigue is mostly a myth. Like just put some thought into it for a moment, do cats care when their whisters touch stuff when they are lying down or sleeping? Do they care when they squeeze into a tight space or lay in a tiny box? Does your cat rub its face on anythingnand everything it gets the chance to? Then why would only thr bowl cause whisker fatigue?
