Post Punk Kitchen Forum

My apologies if anything like this has been posted before. I searched around a bit and couldn't find exactly the same problem.

I have two cats. They are both about the same age (just under 2) but they are very different. One, the boy, is a biggish cat who loves to eat and eats way too fast and would eat anything you put in front of him if he had the chance. He's really bad about it also, and tries to break into the food all the time, does NOT care whatsoever even if he gets caught, KNOWS when he's being naughty, etc. etc. Truthfully, I think he just can't help himself.

The girl cat is a little black cat, very slinky and small. Though the small cat eats plenty, she is more of a grazer, and I think she would love to just be able to go to the bowl every so often and munch a bit, but because of the boy cat's over the top love of food, she is forced to eat when I feed them.

Sometimes I have to put him in another room to let her eat. It's sad otherwise --she literally looks over her shoulder and gets nervous because he sits behind her after scarfing his food down and watches, biding his time until he can swoop in and steal her sweet, sweet meal. BUT THEN, because they are bffs, she'll eat for a bit and then go and OPEN the door for him and let him out. I've watched this happen quite a few times.

Do you have any solutions? I was thinking of some crazy contraption with food in it that only she could fit into so as to let her eat more often, but I'm afraid he'd get into it or it would make him really sad or something.

my mom puts her grazing cats in the bathroom or bedroom with some food and closes the door to keep the greedy cats from hovering or stealing food. they meow when they want to be let out, and that's that. she has to do it multiple times a day when she's home, but it's not a huge hassle. can girl cat open all the doors? is there anywhere you could put her that would be secure?

She can open the bathroom and bedroom doors. We have a large closet that might work for her feeding area, but those are the only ones. The kitchen used to have a door, apparently, but it was removed before we got here.

Maybe something like this? It's a box with a cat door that is coded to a tag on the cat's collar. If you can get your cats to use a cat door, you're golden. My cat couldn't get the hang of it, so it didn't work for us.



LINK: http://meowspace.biz/

I think some of these doohickeys don't even need a collar -- they can be coded to a microchip if he/she has one.

I have no idea how much this particular setup costs.

That's exactly the type of thing I was thinking of! Although the way that other cat is just watching through the glass is kind of sad, haha!

You could try putting a golf ball in the scarfer's bowl. That should slow down his eating.

Wow. This is amazing. I have one cat (former stray) that is unfortunately getting obese, and my other kitty prefers to graze but only eats when she is hungry so she is a healthy weight. I'm going to look more into this option!

I have to do this. One of my cats, who was a feral, will eat anything and everything in site, while my other cat is a grazer. Separating them and feeding them 3x daily fixes the issues and keeps both at a healthy weight.