I hadn't realised my cat's been eating her brother's leftovers and is starting to get a bit chubby. Wise to it now, I take his bowl away and have been trying to train her that once she's had her bowful, that's it!

She'll trot off obediently, with a firm "no". Trouble is, a couple of minutes later she comes back and asks again. Do cats have short term memory? Can you reinforce behaviour by repeating something enough times, or would it not make any difference if I said no, 100 times? She actually enjoys me saying no - the other day, it was if she purposely came in to rattle me, and then belted off like it's a game.

I don't think it works. I was feeding my kitten seperatley to the other cats as I wanted to make sure he was eating enough. I'd put the other cats food in their normal place in the kitchen and the kitten food in the livingroom with me, topping it up over the day. I spent 6 months telling the other cats no, spraying them with water and it didn't really do anything. They'd go away but a few minutes later they'd be sneaking back. They knew they were doing wrong! bloody cats

I personally think cats have some inherant ability to misconstrue the term "no" to mean "give it another go"

My 11 month old kitty simply does not understand the word no in any context.... It's like saying no spurs her on to try even harder!!

Just greedy.

Our two are 9 and 10 (roughly) and the younger one has always done what you describe.

We now sit them at feeding time other wise the greedy one finishes first, shoves the other one out of the way, and finished her food as well.

She won't do it if we're in the room, cos she knows she'll get shouted at.

But they're not daft. If we go out of the room and poke our heads round the corner a minute later, theres a very good chance that fatso will be shoving her mum out the way to get to the food.

She'll bolt when she sees you come back though.

In other words:

She knows shes not meant to do it.
She won't do it if supervised.
But remove the supervision ..........

Yeah I find that as well, cats don't "do" discipline.

That's just like one of mine, who has the same eating problem regarding her brother's bowl!

I swear she sees it as a game because she's always got one eye on me to see if I've noticed. When I say 'no' and go to move her from the food, she makes that little chirruping sound and gallops off with her tail straight up in the air. If I don't follow her she actually stops in the hallway and waits for me

I'd say your cat is as cheeky as mine is!

That made me laugh. So true, Rainbowgirl. One of our cats has even learnt a little smile, to see if that'll melt me. He screws up his eyes and is definitely trying to do a strange thing with his mouth! I would imagine dogs would do that cute, cocking their head to one side, thing - like Eddie in Frasier, in an attempt to weaken you.

Ha ha, the tail in the air thing, yes and then mine runs in the hall, hunches up her back and does the mad scratchy thing on the mat, before belting upstairs and having another crazy 5 minutes. All this from a "NO!"

So funny their differences, whereas one is prepared to go through all that rigmarole for food, the other, when you put the bowl down is like Dougall in Father Ted! He just looks around vacantly - "What's going on?" He's so daft, you literally have to point him in the direction of the bowl!

Ours cats can be fed by one person... then will meow and wail to a different person half an hour later about how starving they are greedy and cheeky!

Of my two, one prefers wet food, the other dry. In the morning they'll both eat the dry food. At lunch they then have 1/2 a pouch each but the little boy will eat all the jelly/gravy from his, then nudge his sister out of the way, eat all the jelly/gravy from her bowl and go back to his bowl and eat the remainder. This prompts the little girl to lose interest in her own bowl and she trots off. He then finishes his and starts on her bowl. I've tried all ways to combat this and feed them at different times. I've even taken away her bowl and put a cover on it to find the brother up on the surface eating happily out of her bowl (in preference to his own) after pushing the cover away.

I'm just thankful the little girl likes her crunchies although she would graze all day if she could. Also, I don't mind so much as he is a big lean cat and she is a little round 'pudden'!

Also, they are hilarious if they are told 'No' for any reason and, similar to a previous post, they will have an absolute tantrum. One will fling himself on the floor and kick his legs in the air, staring menacingly at me, followed by the 'crazyfrog' look/ears pinned back and a bolt through the house up on to his tree whilst his sister will huff and puff (literally) and chirrup and will scramble up on to her tree whereby she'll pad the life out of her hammock and flop down with a big sigh, giving me such a filthy/drop dead look. They really are like stroppy teenagers and are so funny with it.