It is a warm day and you have a door and some of the windows open. You feed your cat and later although your cat's dish is empty s/he is meowing loudly and looking up at you desperately appealing for food.

You think your cat is being cheeky in demanding second helpings so soon after devouring a full dish of succulent meaty chunks .

Have you ever thought that the reason why your cat is asking for second helpings is because it never even saw the first serving? The reason for that possibly being because another cat crept in quietly and ate the meal while no one was looking? I have seen two or three cats try this.

Do you think that your cat's food has ever been eaten - or partly consumed (or her/his water or milk drunk) - by a cat which does not belong to you?

I would be interested in reading your comments on this here in this thread.

Please also vote in the poll at the top of this page. Thank you.

l have actually seen a cat coming down the back garden path to come through the cat flap to eat my cat's tea . Needless to say, the intruder cat was chased away! On occasion, l've even caught a foreign feline red handed actually in the kitchen so this does happen.

My cat would never ever allow ANOTHER CAT to come into HER kitchen, much less to go anywhere near her food. It is entirely unthinkable. The cat that tried would be risking life and limb.

Absolutely disgraceful. What a cheek.




I am pretty sure that my cat has never gone into someone else's house looking for food and I am puzzled as to why one or two cats do do this. Are they not fed enough? Do they prefer the food served in someone else's home? Or are they just greedy?

I think that my cat might let another cat have a bite or two or her meal if it was one of her friends (she chills out with the local gang of felines from time to time ).

When I had my cats food in the kitchen, it was being continually stolen by other cats. I used to give her more food to compensate and then she ended up putting on too much weight. I moved her food bowl up to my bedroom (the place she feels most comfortable), exchanged the cheaper food for diet food and now I can monitor how much she eats and since being on a diet, has eaten everything put down in front of her. She had a check up recently and is nearly back at the weight she should be and much more content now she isn't keeping watch for other cats. Another problem with other cats getting in for food was the males spraying everywhere which stank the place out. Now if they come in, there is no food in the kitchen so they go back out again.

I am glad that she is now able to eat without fear of her meal being taken from her by another cat. Imagine if we all had to keep watch in case someone else grabbed our food!

I had other cats coming in the cat flap and eating my cat's food, once of twice I would be woken up by a full on fight in the hall as the interloper had been caught.

I fitted a microchip cat flap so only my cat can get into the house, problem solved.

How clever . I never knew such a thing as a microchip cat flap existed.

I expect that my cat will be wanting one if she hears about this .

I do have to watch out - otherwise my cat will be having a lick of my plate

Just remembered a funny incident when I was eating a chinese meal. Chicken in batter ball on the end of my fork, too hot to eat. Me = blowing on it to cool down. Grumpy = on table pulling fork towards her daintily with her paw. Made me laugh so much I let her do it - she then nicked it! Have tried to get her to do it again since, but she hasn't.

I came home from work the other evening to find a beautiful white and ginger cat in my kitchen with my 3 cats. The food bowls were empty. I had recently disabled the magnetic element of my cat flap because my 2 younger cats had lost their collars (with the magnets attached) but I hadn't seen any visiting cats for ages so I thought I'd be alright.

Having locked the cat flap the cheeky ginger cat then spent a good hour trying to get back in He's not a stray, he's sleek and well fed and wears a collar but seems to have made friends with my cats who were quite keen to go out and play with him. I don't really want him coming into the house so I've reinstalled the magnetic element and reapplied collars to my 2 younger cats. I may have to consider a microchip cat flap because I'm worried about my 2 younger cats' tendency to lose their collars and consequently be locked out. My Tabitha never lost her collars in her 16 years and my Bernard has only lost his once so my magnetic cat flap has generally been very effective over the years.

I think even well fed cats can be cheeky and, somehow, other cats' food seems to taste nicer than their own.

My cat is constantly starving and recently lost half his bodyweight in about a month. We did think it was the other cat snaffling his food but no. It turned out that my cat has hyperthyroidism, kidney damage and heart problems.

When Zebedee started to go outdoors some of his friends started to come indoors through the catflap. One evening I discovered a large ginger cat tucking in to Zeb's dinner while he sat by watching!

Ginger Cat took one look at me and bolted for the catflap. Unfortunately the flap was locked so that Zebedee could come in, but not go out again. Before I could get to the back door to open it, Ginger Cat battered his way through the flap and made his escape, leaving the flap in pieces.

We haven't seen Ginger Cat since. We now have a microchip catflap so only Zebedee and Angel can come in and out. Zebedee will still eat Angel's dinner if he gets half a chance though.

When we had cats we had 5 of them and stood and watched while they ate their meals or one or two would have been enormous while a couple starved. We do the same with the dogs always wait with them while they eat.

Yep, I got my cat (then kitten) last year so he was the new kid on the block and we didn't let him out till he was about 9 or 10 months old (we didn't let him out until he was fixed but then we had the snow...) so it was the warm summer and we took him out on a lead at first but then we let him go out on his own eventually and there are 2 cats next door, a bengal who has been here for about 2 years and a very fat black one for about 5 years. We think the fat one is eating all of the bengal's food as we have often caught the bengal sniffing our Oliver's food bowls as the doors have been left open. Our Oliver is so protective of us but he really fails to know when another cat is around or even in the house XD

Anyhoo, we were going on holiday so needed a catflap and went straight in to get the microchip one which is amazing! (the one thing I love about it is when it reaches a certain light in dusk it auto locks so the cat can't go out again but can always come in again, we don't let ours out at night). However, we'll have to see what happens next summer when the doors are left open again but now our Oliver is he same size of the bengal and even a bit longer, he is soooooooooo long

l forget to mention that in view of the feline intruders, l got 2 large cat bells (for a collar) from the local hardware store. l put them on a bit of thread and taped them to the insides of the catflaps so that they serve as an early warning system/alien cat deterrent.

That seems to stop all but the most determined cats. The odd thing is that the cats that have come in never look skinny and malnourished but plump and well fed - l guess they're just trying it on for a treat or something.

I have heard of cats who want a share of some of their owner's food as well as all of their own meal .

What a cheek.

Clever.


Perhaps the food you buy for your cat is better than that given to those cats which have tried to grab your cat's meal? Maybe the flavour of the food is new to the intruder cats? Or, as you possibly imply (in the second quote above) it could be that the cats who attempt to take some or all of your cat's food are just plain greedy.

Well, my cat http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...227104538.jpg/ does get medium range cat food and not the "kittie sludge" supermarket own brands which do seem to be on the inferior side. Even looking at that cheap stuff puts me off and my cat won't eat it anyway! Cats are notoriously picky unlike dogs who'll eat anything.

Your cat looks nice (link to picture kindly given in the last posting to this thread) and does not seem to mind having its picture taken. Is your cat (in the picture) meditating - possibly contemplating the next meal?


My cat will not eat one particular brand of cat food. The food from that manufacturer remained in her dish untouched until it was removed and replaced with food of another brand or a home cooked meal which she now expects every time .

as our cat is getting rather ancient she gets fed whatever she wants whenever she wants it

I don't have a cat but I think it's possible that your cat's food is being eaten by another cat or something.

Well, it is nearly Christmas

Unfortunately I can't vote on this because there's no:


option.

Probably because that caption is too long!