Are you frustrated by ants getting into your cat’s food bowl? This simple DIY will show you how to keep ants out of cat food bowls quickly and easily.
Our two cats (Maddy and Wally) are part inside and part outside cats. They have a few hours outside each day and are brought back inside in the late afternoon.
When they are out during the day we always put out some dry food for them to eat. There’s no issue with doing this over winter because there’s not many ants around. Once the weather warms up it is a different story though, the ants soon find the food no matter where you put it!
This summer I’ve come up with a pretty easy solution to the issue of how to keep ants out of cat food bowls. All you need is a saucer for a plant pot (i.e. what you put under a potted plant to catch the excess water). Just make sure that your saucer is a little bit bigger than the cat’s food bowl and you’ll be all set. Oh and you’ll need a small amount of water too!
So there’s no need to go out and buy a fancy ant proof cat bowl, you can make one yourself!
How to Keep Ants Out Of Cat Food
What you’ll need:
- saucer for plant pot*
- water
* make sure the saucer is slightly bigger than cat’s food bowl
How to set it up:
- Place the saucer where you want to feed your cat.
- Add a small amount of water to the saucer. You only need to cover the bottom of the saucer because if you put too much it will make the food bowl float. It does with mine anyway because they are plastic.
- Place your cat food bowl with food into the saucer and you’re done!
You can top up the saucer with extra water as necessary. Plus don’t forget to provide you cat with a separate bowl of fresh water to drink.
As you can see, keeping ants out of a cat food bowl is super easy really. The water in the saucer forms a moat around the cat’s bowl keeping the ants out!
This method has worked very well this summer. Maddy and Wally can have access to dry food all day without having to put up with the ants!
We only allow our cats to have dry food during the day and keep the wet food for the evenings. This makes sure they are keen to get back inside at night. If you want some help with getting your cat to come inside at night check out My Tips for Enforcing a Cat Curfew.
Hi, I'm Kaylene, and I'm a keen gardener,budding baker and wannabe DIYer!
I have some stray cats that I leave food out for at night and I’ve always struggled with ants getting in the food. It seems once the ants get into the food the cats won’t eat it (i can’t blame them). So I tried your idea last night and unfortunately it did not work. There were hundreds of ants in the bowl and in the water.
That’s very annoying Hayley, I’ve never had any problems with ants when I use this method. It is normally very tiny black ants that I am dealing with but perhaps yours are bigger? Maybe you could make the moat around the cat food a little wider?
I use a tin pie plate and I had Terro ant poison around the back side of the pie tin. The ants eat the poison and take it back to their nests. I usually do this twice a year.
I do something like that, and the ants just swim across and/or form a bridge. this might work if you only have a few, but where I live there’s a lot of ants, so I was hoping for a better idea.
This method has always worked for me Sussan, even when there are hundreds of ants!
This idea does not work very well. I have tried this many times now and I keep getting ants in the cats food bowl. I’m not going to try putting oil around the rim of the container I’m hoping that will help some.
This has worked perfectly for me. It’s pretty idiot-proof.
I feed a large colony (8-10 cats and kittens) and have several bowls in plastic trays that hold a little bit of water. No more ants in their food, and there are a lot of ants in my backyard!
Thank you!!
Glad to hear that it worked for you Tom. I’m sure all the cats are pretty happy too!
I have five semi-ferial cats that I feed in the morning and evening. The ants that I am dealing with are little black things, and I think they think that they are Olympic swimmers. The water moat keeps them out for a while, but when the first one makes it across, it is a stampede. I’ve even tried hanging the bowls off the ground/floor. Yep! Right down the rope they come. I’m to the point of not knowing what else to try.
Oh that’s annonying Hal, the ants in your yard must be determined! Could you try smearing the outer edge of the cats bowl with something sticky, like vasoline? I haven’t tried it but I have read that ants wont walk accross any gooey surface. You could even try smearing it on the outside of the water moat. That way they would have a sticky barrier and the water moat to cross. Surely that would keep them out! I hope this helps.