Maine Coon Cat's Odd Way of Drinking Water Is the Cutest Chaos

The first piece of advice I ever got about owning cats was from a friend who told me that “cats are contrary.” She meant that they will never do precisely what you expect them to. If you buy an expensive cat bed, they will probably prefer the box it came in. The day after you put in a bulk order for a brand of food they seem to like, they will inevitably decided never to touch it again. As a mother of young children, the behavior didn’t seem all that unusual to me. I guess kids, too, are “contrary.”

And, just like human children, cats will do amusing, silly, and curious things, that at first seem utterly bizarre, unless you take the time to find out what entirely rational reason they have for engaging in what may first appear to be very strange, indeed. Like this cat, who is choosing to drink water from a bowl by scooping it up in his paw.

In this video, we see a majestic Maine Coon cat splayed out on a flowered bathroom rug and calmly dipping his paw into a square bowl of water.

Related: Maine Coon Kittens Discovering Water for the First Time Are Too Cute to Resist

“Can someone explain this to me?” asks his parent in the caption, curious as to what this cat is doing drinking water in this curious way.

In the comments, people share that their cat has been known to behave in a similar manner. “My cat Cali did the exact same thing!” Says one. “Like, why? Just why?”

Others are similarly baffled. “These things are not for us to understand. Just for us to enjoy,” says one.

Cats being cats is the general consensus. But could there be something more going on than a kitty amusing himself?

Only one person seemed to think so. “He doesn’t want his whiskers to touch the bowl,” they explained. “It actually causes a thing called whisker fatigue!”

Whisker Fatigue or Whisker Stress in Cats

Whisker fatigue—sometimes called whisker stress—is a term used to describe a situation where a cat becomes over-sensitized to the sensation of their whiskers hitting a surface, such as the sides of deep food or water bowls, tight entrances like a cat door or litter box opening, or even people touching or brushing their whiskers.

Cat whiskers are a special kind of thick, long hair called “vibrissae” that grow on cat’s eyebrows, chin, on their front legs, and most famously, on their snout. They are especially sensitive as they are attached to bundles of nerves and help a cat with a sense of touch and the space around them known as proprioception. But because they are so very sensitive, they can easily cause the cat annoyance or even pain if they are touched too much.

Avoiding “Whisker Fatigue” in Cats

Signs of whisker stress or whisker fatigue in cats include avoiding food bowls while pacing around in front of it, knocking food or water out of their bowls to eat off the floor or their their paw as seen in this video, and other, more obvious signs of annoyance.

Many experts advise that if your cat is showing signs of whisker fatigue, to switch to feeding them off wide, shallow dishes or even plates. Pet supply stores often sell water bubblers or fountains with wide shallow dishes as cat water bowls to encourage them to drink more.

But if whisker fatigue were really a problem, how to you explain all the times my cat has gone after my personal glass of water?

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