We recently (4.5 months ago) adopted a lovely cat ‘Banoffee’ who was a stray. He’s around 4 years old and had now been neutered and chipped. He’s settled in really well - he seems to love having a home and has gone from being nervous and jumpy to loving fuss and play. It was quite slow going with introducing him to our other cat Lola (thanks those who offered advice on here!) but we have seen good progress there recently - they share a space a lot now and are friendly towards each other (nose touches, sniffs) at least most of the time (we still have the odd chase and hiss but it’s reducing more and more).
Our issue at the moment is around food. Banoffee understandably is incredibly food driven and has shown a lot of food insecurity from his time as a stray. He has relaxed a little here as he doesn’t wolf his meals down at quite such a pace and he will now actually sit patiently and let Lola eat her own food without trying to take it off her! However, on a number of occasions he has come home after time outside with large chunks of cooked meat (e.g. ham or chicken) - we have no idea where he is getting these - we guess out of a bin of a possibly overenthusiastic thrower-away, or even from someone’s dinner table! I don’t think anyone is likely to be giving them to him, as the ham in particular was a rather large chunk so I can’t see it being likely that anyone gave that to him. He’s also quite wary of strange humans. So we are worried that a) he might be taking someone’s hard earned food, b) that someone could get angry and hurt him if that’s the case, and c) he’s getting plumper because it’s hard to know what food intake he’s having if he’s also scavenging when out!
Any ideas?! We already feed him grain free but are thinking that if we feed him only very high quality, high meat food that it might lessen his scavenging (read some research that suggested this significantly reduced hunting in cats so maybe it would also decrease scavenging?) and also made sure we try to stick to very regular meal times for him to increase food security?
Thank you!
Our issue at the moment is around food. Banoffee understandably is incredibly food driven and has shown a lot of food insecurity from his time as a stray. He has relaxed a little here as he doesn’t wolf his meals down at quite such a pace and he will now actually sit patiently and let Lola eat her own food without trying to take it off her! However, on a number of occasions he has come home after time outside with large chunks of cooked meat (e.g. ham or chicken) - we have no idea where he is getting these - we guess out of a bin of a possibly overenthusiastic thrower-away, or even from someone’s dinner table! I don’t think anyone is likely to be giving them to him, as the ham in particular was a rather large chunk so I can’t see it being likely that anyone gave that to him. He’s also quite wary of strange humans. So we are worried that a) he might be taking someone’s hard earned food, b) that someone could get angry and hurt him if that’s the case, and c) he’s getting plumper because it’s hard to know what food intake he’s having if he’s also scavenging when out!
Any ideas?! We already feed him grain free but are thinking that if we feed him only very high quality, high meat food that it might lessen his scavenging (read some research that suggested this significantly reduced hunting in cats so maybe it would also decrease scavenging?) and also made sure we try to stick to very regular meal times for him to increase food security?
Thank you!