Welcome to Pet Talk mikie. My cats Pepper and Sunny both do this with there food dish. I've told other people about this and no one had ever heard or seen a cat doing this. They'll also do it right after they use the litter box so I'll find litter on their placemat. Both Sunny and Pepper also play in their water dish. Storm doesn't do either one of these things. I always thought that this was abnormal behavior. Maybe I have two normal cats and one abnormal cat. Hmmm.