Cat Food Thief

Ever since we moved to the new place, Tigger’s cat food occasionally disappears. The whole bowl miraculously empties. Tigger, being a cat, is a finicky eater at best. He’ll only eat the food at the top of the bowl, no matter the bowl size or depth. Eventually, the bowl has month+ old food on the bottom and fresh food on top. So we figured that the missing food wasn’t from Tigger.

The food sits next to the cat door, so our fear was that one of the neighborhood cats had found their way in. This made us nervous, given our experiences with cats and houses. Michelle and I were going to try and find a web cam to catch the culprit, but Michelle decided to try moving the food before going with such a drastic scheme.

When the food moved, the disappearing food problem got worse. How? Well, you see, when a food bowl is on the ground, it’s very easy to eat out of without disturbing the bowl. When the bowl is moved to, say, eye level for Barley, it becomes more difficult to eat because you have to approach from a different angle and such.

Well, the bowl was emptied twice, both times tipped messily towards the edge of the cabinet and both times spilling water and food on the floor. This last time happened while Michelle and I went out for food. It was clear that Barley was the cat food thief. Busted.

Now we’re just curious as to why he stopped behaving. He had always been so good about not eating Tigger’s food. But he’s been eating less of his lately, and Tigger recently switched from Senior to Sensitive Stomach formula, and maybe it tastes better. Still, it’s not good for the Roo so we’re going to have to place it even higher.

3 thoughts on “Cat Food Thief”

  1. That sucks. We had the same problem with P. He wouldn’t stop eating the cats food no matter where we put it (high, low, different room, whatever). So we ended up having to put the food in a room and block it off with a kiddy gate. Works fine but is weird to have a room blocked off from the dog.

    That’s odd that he all of a sudden started doing it more! Maybe his stomach has been hurting and the sensitive stomach formula makes his tummy feel better.

  2. Imagine this:
    You’ve eaten steak your whole life. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It’s all you’ve ever been giving and you were happy with it.

    The one day you notice that there is this plate of fish. You’ve always been told not to eat it, and it’s never bothered you before. But now, after a decade or so of nothing but steak…a slab of fish sounds nice…hell, anything different sounds nice.

    So, like Eve to the apple, you decide to take a bite. No one seems to mind because it was just sitting there…but you feel guilty. Should you have eaten the fish? Was is bad for you?…perhaps even EVIL!

    So you do your best to avoid the fish. You eat your steak, but the fish haunts you. You remember every bone, every flakey fishy bite. Until you finally break down and gobble it up as fast as you can. Like an addict, you swear this was the last time….until the cravings kick in.

    I’ll stop now, but you get the point…

  3. It’s really weird how they like the sensitive tummy food. Our cats had an experience with it after a sample from the vet and now they won’t eat anything else the dirty bastards…
    I think the first ingredient is rice, so maybe Barley is just having a trip down memory lane from that time you had to feed him a ton of rice when he ate the turkey and bones (or whatever).

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