Cats like to have somewhere quiet to eat.

In a multi-cat home, each cat needs their own food bowl—and it should be away from other cats' bowls.

Putting the cats' food bowls next to each other is a common mistake.

Providing resources in the way they prefer helps to reduce stress in cats.

I wouldn’t be very happy if I was trying to eat a meal, but other people were hovering around who might steal my food off my plate. Yet many of us expect our pet cats to put up with that situation. It can be a source of stress—especially in a home with more than one cat where people sometimes expect the cats to share a food bowl. Even if they are each given their own bowl, often those bowls are placed close together—which kind of turns them into one food bowl.

Multiple and separated resources

Having multiple resources that are separate from each other is one of the five pillars of a healthy feline environment (Ellis et al 2013). This applies to all of the cat’s resources, from food bowls to litter boxes, beds, and toys. Put simply, cats don’t like to share. This means that if you have more than one cat, their food bowls need to be apart from each other. You might also........

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