Feeding your cat can be a wonderful experience, but the type of cat dish do you use can make a difference in your cat’s taste.  Plastic dishes are generally recommended because they are cheap and fall resistant; as a rule, they will not break when they fall and they will not be too pricy when you are sick and tired of the colour of the dish.  However, they are not the best thing to acquire, plastic dishes are not microwavable; heating your cat’s food in the plastic dish can release toxic cyanide gases and fumes from the plate and onto your cat’s food. 

Of course, the amount of gas will not be sufficient to kill or immediately harm your pet, but certainly it is not a healthy thing. Furthermore, plastic plates are susceptible to scratching and in these scratches bacteria will set in, these can make your cat sick to his or her stomach. 

Stainless steel plates are the veterinarian choice for your cat since these are also fall resistant and will not scratch, thus will not create bacteria that might harm the health of your cat. However, they are not microwavable and they care quite noisy, which makes them loose against those plastic plates.

Finally, there are those of ceramic.  Ceramic plates are generally the most expensive ones, some of them are microwavable and some aren’t; still, none of them are resistant to falls and will break upon impact.  They are scratch resistant and are heavy enough to prevent your cat from moving them around.

Melamine plates are NOT microwavable, despite what the manufacturer might say, it is not recommended that you use them in the microwave since they release the same cyanide gas than the plastic ones.  Of course, they come in a wider variety of forms and designs, you still need to make sure if it is worth the risk.