Originally published at: Cat does a happy dance as it drinks from a glass of water | Boing Boing
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The pawing/digging around the water source is instinctual. It looks silly because of the arrangement of tiny cat and elevated water surface. My cat digdigdigs at his water dish before drinking, too. Note that it precedes drinking and stops when the cat begins to drink. There are varying explanations for it online, from digging at the watering hole to making it move like a stream to marking territory.
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One of my cats does that too, in their water dish - resulting in water splashed all over and a trail of wet paw prints out of the kitchen.
It’s an instinct.
I had one cat who would dip his paw and lick the water off a few times, then if the water was judged acceptable, deign to lap from the dish.
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Cute! One of our fosters does something like that now, it’s adorable.
Reminds me of a special kitty I had as a kid, creatively named Fluffy. If I left my soup bowl with a spoon in it, she would lever the spoon up out of the bowl, lap from the spoon, then lower back into the soup. 
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“We can dance if we want to”. Safety Dance.
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Vodka.
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My cats pretend to bury the water dish in the wood floor like they do when they throw up, although then of course it’s on a rug.
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My previous cat would just drink out of whatever was presented to him without dance or comment, but my current kitty does a variation of this, and I’ve always wondered the reasoning behind it. She approaches the glass, and with her right paw (apparently cats can be right or left handed), she reaches across to the front-left of the glass and kind of paws at the table a couple of times, then drinks.
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Whelp, now THAT’S gonna be stuck in my head for hours. Good thing I like it.
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That’s like me - with a Balvenie 21 year old.
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If it’s an unusual container, our cat (also a rightie) will stick his paw in it and lick off his paw.
Cute when it’s water, but the first time we saw him doing it was when he discovered a container or powdered cream that was left unattended!
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ive had a cat that would dig at their water dish too. i always assumed it was kneading like kittens do when suckling. my cat came to me way too young, and i always wondered if that might have something to do with it
( in a way, i think “instinct” is wrong. i think of that word in this context as meaning like a computer program. i’d suspect it’s instead more like scratching an itch: they discover it fills a certain psychological need. more like solving a satisfying puzzle than following instructions )
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Oh, kitty just wants to stay hydrated as she proceeds with her main task of sharpening her claws on that hardwood floor. Tough workout. 
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I named a black cat who’d appeared on our doorstep Charybdis. Only a couple hours later we discovered her penchant for stirring whirlpools into waterbowls before drinking.
Many years later, another stirry cat entered our lives.
We currently have two boys who stir the water; all the previous stirry kitties were girls.
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I think that’s how most instincts work, at least in animals with a higher degree of brain function. The animal (or person) is not “forced” to do them, but performing them fulfills a psychological need or, equivalently, not performing them is stressful.
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Glad to hear this is normal. I was fully expecting to load up the comments and read how this poor cat is actually suffering from Welkins-Lemur Forcultankly and should immediately seek treatment.
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