Problem: Mismatched dishes, undersized placemat and spilled food that would migrate across the slick surfaces out of the food area.  (Our dog Mojo knows not to eat from the cat food dishes, but he feels that cleaning up stray pieces of food is OK, and sometimes if they’ve spilled a lot he gets on a roll and cleans out all the dishes, too.)

Solution: A set of vintage melmac bowls found on Etsy and quilted placemat that helps keep dropped food from spreading away from the dishes.  The placemat was a piece of patchwork I’d sewn for another project and abandoned, just cut to the size I wanted.  (That’s why the squares are strangely sized, but the cats haven’t seemed to notice.)  We also just gave up on having a water dish by the cat bowls.  They never used it and it just got yucky.  They all share dog water.

Since the change, Mojo has eaten the cat food once, but that is an improvement.  The quilted placemat can just be thrown in the wash, which is nice.  I’ll probably end up making them another placemat or two and they probably deserve another set of dishes, too.  Not that they’re spoiled at all.