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.

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.

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?

While whisker fatigue is in debate, it's true some cats are weird about touching the bowl. I personally feed the cats on the same plates I eat from and they get water from a fountain. But I have known many cats who were fine with a bowl too. I think the main thing is the material of the receptacle. Some plastics can hold bacteria that makes their lil faces break out. :(

My cat likes to invert her spine into a kind of gel substance and then stick her face down the side of the bed between the wall.

I am fairly sure that she is perfectly happy with having a whiskers compressed, what she's not happy about is having less food.

Then there is my cat who stuffes half of his body in a 5cm diameter pudding container just so that he can reach the very last drop of it. Then wonders why he is stuck and as soon as I save him from his pudding prison he does the same again.

If I served food on a plate, I’d be serving food on the floor.

😮 So THAT'S why they will beg for food even if the bowl isn't empty!

I started feeding my cat out of a pie dish because I was worried about this and I think it prevents it.

And it had the added benefit of making it look like my cat just polished off an entire pie all by himself when he’s done eating.

cats have autism don't ask me to explain 💅

My cat still acts like her bowl is empty even though it is flat, so I'm skeptical.

While true, my theory is that they might also want something else. I use a plate and sometimes she'll just beg for more anyway even if half of what I gave her is still in the bowl, I'll give her a tiny bit of something else and she'll go eat that instead lol

For dry food, if you put it in small (4-5cm dia.) cups they WILL reach in to grab the kibble and will eat one at a time.

This is a great way to de-chonk.

Yeah, I learned about this as a child, since my cat would put her paw into the cat bowl and pull pieces of dry food out to eat on the floor.

I started putting her food on a plate and no more food was pulled to the floor.

The kitten I have now plays too rough and breaks all his whiskers off, so he doesn't mind the bowl. But he'll also get a plate if he mellows out.

We use small plates for our cats. It doesn't stop them from begging for more food even though they still have food.

My cat yells at me like I'm a criminal even when the bowl is fucking full. Where is your god now?

BULLSHIT!

My cats dgaf.