....unless we put his food directly onto the floor! He only does this with raw. He has always disliked food in a bowl, so we switched to a plate and that works just fine for canned food--but recently he started sniffing his raw and then walking away. After some trial and error (picking it up on a fork and then putting it down into the dish again got him to eat one day) I tried putting it directly on the floor, and he gobbled it up immediately.

Now, whenever we give him raw, no matter if it's ground or chunked, he won't start eating unless we put a piece/portion on the floor in front of his dish. The remaining food he picks up, piece by piece or portion by portion, with one claw, and brings it to his mouth or drops it on the floor and then eats it there.

They get their dishes changed at every feed, so I know it's not that they're dirty or have old food on them. They eat in the same spot every day, next to eachother but separated by about 2 feet, so I know it's not something different about their feeding area. He's always been "tactile" with his food, picking it up and moving it around, but he's never refused to eat before. It's at the point where if we don't put food on the floor, he'll just skip the whole meal (I tested it out a few times to see how serious he was about boycotting the food, and Wicket ended up eating both portions!).

I think it might just be a personality quirk, but I really REALLY don't want to have to wash my whole floor every day.....any suggestions? Anyone else have a weird, weird cat?

a plastic placemat? Wash it a few times first to try to get out the plastic smell.

Thanks Nan! We actually had one of those before we moved and it was "lost" (read: I forgot to put it in the car). I'm specifically wondering about this new behavior, though--he never used to have an issue even eating out of a bowl (he didn't like to do it but he still would eat), now he won't hardly eat off a plate and prefers the floor? It's all tile in the kitchen so that's fine but it's just an odd change, not something he used to do. He's always been strange about how he eats but he's never refused to eat based on location before!