It’s not a good idea to have ants in or near your pet’s food unless your pet is an anteater or a hedgehog.
Spring tends to bring with it the ants, along with the sunnier skies and blooming flowers. Ants are the bane of many parents of four-legged children. They love to find your cat’s food and spend the following several months causing mayhem and preventing your cat from enjoying their food.
How to keep ants away from cat food? Keep reading while we list several methods you can use to keep ants and other insects from ruining your pet’s food.
Related Reading: How To Keep Flies Away From Food?
Table of Contents
How To Keep Ants Away From Cat Food?
1. Place The Food Bowl In A Water Bowl
Ants hate water even more than your cat and will go to great lengths to avoid it, despite your cat’s well-known dislike of it. One of the best ways to prevent ants from contaminating your cat’s food is to set the food bowl inside a water bowl so that it floats. The water will prevent the ants from obtaining the food by forming a type of mote as long as it can’t enter the food.
2. Chalk
Chalk is another item ants dislike, so they will frequently avoid it if at all possible. You can prevent ants from accessing the food by enclosing the bowl with a thick line drawn with regular school chalk. In our experience, this method works best when the line is quite thick, which can take some time to draw with school chalk but lasts longer than baking soda.
3. Tape
Double-sided tape is a simple solution you can use to temporarily store food outdoors. The ants will adhere to the tape and cannot access the food until a sufficient number of them are captured. The drawback of this approach is that it can be quite ugly, and once there are enough ants trapped, they will be able to walk over them to get the food.
4. Baking Soda
If you spread baking soda around the bowl to form a barrier, ants can be repelled effectively. By dehydrating the ants and making them avoid it, baking soda works in opposition to the water method. They won’t disturb the food if they can’t see a clear path to it. The only drawback is that you must check it frequently to ensure the barrier is intact and add baking soda as needed. Nevertheless, it is a non-toxic and affordable method for keeping ants away.
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5. Clove Oil
An aromatic product of the clove plant, clove oil is very effective at keeping ants away and might also keep other insects away. There are no ants in the bowl for the entire day with just a few drops scattered around it. However, clove oil may also irritate your cat’s delicate nose and make it refuse to eat.
6. Crushed Red Peppers
Any pizza parlor will carry crushed red pepper, and this spiciness can help you make an ant-repelling barrier around your pet’s food. However, using this food also puts your cat at risk of eating it.
7. Vaseline
The insects won’t get through Vaseline rubbed around the bowl’s outer edge. Vaseline doesn’t have a strong smell and won’t bother your cat, but it can keep ants away longer than most other techniques. Vaseline can collect dirt and is bad for the environment, but that is its only drawback.
8. Vinegar
Another fantastic way to stop ants from contaminating your cat’s food is to use vinegar to clean the area directly beneath the bowl. Ants are frequently deterred by the odor of vinegar. Even though cats dislike it, they should go back to the bowl before ants do. It’s simple to try because most households already have vinegar.
9. Change The Food Location
A sophisticated system is used by ants to locate food, using scouts and sign language to guide the colony there. It can be difficult to dissuade them because once they locate the food, they frequently return to the same location to check if there is more. Up until a scout discovers the new location, shifting the food’s location can be a great way to keep ants at bay. Increase the effectiveness of your new position by securing it with a chalk or baking soda ring.
10. Limit Access
Limiting access to the bowl is the most effective and economical way to guarantee that no ants contaminate your pet’s food. We advise setting the food down only when it is time for your pet to eat and taking it away again a short while later, as opposed to leaving it out all day. Keep the bowl nearby if your cat enjoys eating constantly. The cat may enter and dine before leaving again.
Tips To Keep Pet Food Ant-free
Ants can get into your pet’s food in a number of different ways. The best strategies consist of:
- Storing extra pet food in a lidded plastic container.
- Vacuuming the area around your pet’s bowl daily to keep it free of crumbs.
If ants are contaminating your pet’s food bowl, combine the food and ants in a plastic grocery bag and seal the bag by tying a tight knot at the top. Place the plastic bag in a covered trash can outside and dispose of it. Use dish soap and water to clean the food bowl. Then, to get rid of the ant trail smell, clean the area around the food bowl with dish soap and water (this is also a good opportunity to mop the entire floor). - Make a moat around your pet’s food bowl. Put the food bowl in a shallow pan of water, such as a cake pan, pie tin, or a food bowl that is a few sizes larger than the one you already have. The bowl should have a ring of water surrounding it when you set it inside the water-filled pan. In order to prevent spills into the pet food, the water shouldn’t be too high. Since ants can’t swim, they’ll perish before they can get to the food your pet is eating.
- Keep your home, particularly the pet feeding area, clean. Using lidded trashcans, never leaving food out in the open, and washing your pet’s bowl frequently are all good practices.
How to Prevent Ants In The Kitchen?
Ants will invade any area of your house where there is food once they have gained entry, so your cat’s food is not the only thing they will eat.
You can strategically place cotton balls with a few drops of peppermint oil on them around your house in areas where ants like to enter to prevent them from entering your home and invading your kitchen.
If having cotton balls lying around your home bothers you, you can always use peppermint oil to clean the entrances, including the doorways and windows.
Summary
As you can see, there are a variety of strategies to prevent ants from contaminating your cat’s food. In our household, restricting access is the most effective strategy, but if you must leave food out because you won’t be present when the animal typically eats, you must employ a different strategy. Baking soda works well. It is cheap and simple to use to build a barrier that the ants won’t cross.