Acts Starving

[Somber]

Ever since day one of bringing butters home, if he sees anyone with food he will immediately start meowing & follow you & beg. literately I mean it is sad actually. We adopted him from Pet Smart, the lady said he was from a cat hoarder supposedly. Anyways we have had him for close to 2 months now, he has to know by now that he can have food & water any time right?
He bullies our other female around really bad also I will put some can food on a separate plate & put one down for butters & I will take the other plate in the bedroom & give it to littles, butter will scarf down her food & run in the room where littles is at & eat her food. If littles wants to come out of the other room, butters doesn't let her pass. Littles is 11 yrs old & butters isn't even a year old yet. How do we handle this?

 

[Kieka]

Since Butters isn't a year old he might still be growing and might legitimately be hungry. First thing is check his body condition and weight.

fat-cat-scale.png

• Kieka
• Feb 1, 2017
• 3

He is fluffy so it is hard to tell in the photos but I think he is a 2 or 3 on the above scale. Weigh and evaluate his body condition weekly and see if he is still gaining weight without his body condition being affected. While doing this offer him more food at meals and see if eating more helps him be less aggressive about Littles food. If his wieght is going up and his body condition is getting to the 4 then cut back down on the food. You can also try measuringmhis lenght and height instead of weight to figure out if he is still gorwing. With how fluffy he is and those paws I wouldn't be surprised if he continues to grow until he is 18 months old. Which isn't to stay he should be overfeed but he would need more food then a full grown adult.

Once he stops growing, if he is still food aggressive you might need to supervise meal times or keep him in a separate room. One of mine will make himself sick stealing food from the other two. So I give him a smaller portion knowing he will get some from them and mointored until they are done. They tend to leave him some and he gobbles it up (even if he still has food in his bowl). In cases where he gets too pushy I do put him in another room until they are done. You can also get a microchip triggered food bowl that will only allow the specific cat to eat from it. I know several of our members have had success with that.

 

[ArchyCat]

Butters is probably still growing, as Kieka said. Try leaving a bowl of kibble out all the time. It should help Butters really understand that food is always available. Plus, a growing young cat needs lots of calories and protein!

 

[rubysmama]

Hello and welcome to TCS. Beautiful cat.

I agree with Kieka and A ArchyCat that Butters may be hungry since he is still growing. However, having come from a hoarder situation, it's also possible him being so young that he didn't always get enough food, and maybe even had to fight other cats for food. That, therefore, could have caused a form of "stray cat food obsession".

My Ruby was a stray before she ended up at the shelter where I adopted her, and when I first brought her home, she was looking for food all the time. It took 6 or 7 months, I think, before one day I noticed she'd left food in her dish to eat later. Prior to that she licked her dish clean in one sitting. So it's possible that Butters will need longer than 2 months to learn that there'll always be more food.

Does Butters ever eat so fast, or so much, that he vomits? That's something that could happen if you left a large dish of food out for him all the time. If someone isn't home all day to ensure his dish is always being refilled, there are timed feeding dishes that might work.

How do Butters and Littles get along when food isn't involved?

 

[Kflowers]

If he does eat so fast, or so much, that he vomits, you can help by putting a ping-pong ball in his food dish. Eating around the ball slows down the eating.

 

[ailish]

All of the above, plus... If he was in a hoarder situation he might have had to act this way to get enough food, in which case it is learned survival behavior. If so it can take quite a long while to resolve. My cat was underweight, although not emaciated, when I rescued her. It took at least a year until she would leave food in her dish, and she is an only cat. She is still extremely food motivated and I've had her for 2 1/2 years.

 

[war&wisdom]

I agree -- if he was in a hoarder situation and food-insecure, two months is barely any time at all for him to become confident in the availability of food. And he's so young. It's all he's known. Plus, he's still growing, so he needs all the food he can get! My two still have nearly constant access to food at 7.5 months.