Help,cat behaviour!

[Bluefeline]

Can anyone offer any help me please. Right, here goes: We have a three year old female cat that we adopted from the RSPCA, she was part feral and on top of that has a major heart condition.

 

Anyhow that’s not the issue but her behaviour is. She is ALWAYS begging for food, even when she is completely full. She does not have worms or anything like that, she's been checked by our vet regarding her behaviour. She screams the loudest scream you have ever heard a cat do. She begs our neighbours for food, and they started feeding her. This made it so when we fed her she was that full that she was vomiting. Again had her checked with our vet, she was just over full. This made her put weight on, so asked them to stop feeding her but she still screams for food. I don't know what to do with her.

 

We've tried feeding her little and often with a good quality cat food, feeding her as much as she will eat, but then she over eats and vomits, I've tried giving her a toy with food in it, she just ignores it, she takes food off our other cats so we feed them separate to her.

 

I don't know how else to manage her, it's the constant screaming and begging for food. I have even had an argument with one of our neighbours because they thought we didn't feed her but we do!

 

Please help, if it does not improve we may have to rehome her and I don't want that. My partner isn't getting enough sleep because she begs through the night. He's always tired for work and he has a long drive. Not a good combination. Also if we don't give in to her screaming she with be destructive during the night and destroy furniture.

 

 

Please please help!

[angel22]

How long have you had her for? Could it be that she still doesn't realise that she's going to be fed regularly so she's still just trying to get as much food as possible at every chance like she would have had to when she was living rough?

[katkin]

We adopted a young stray who had similar issues- she was so used to begging and thought every meal was her last so she wolfed her food too. Sadly she only lived to 4 but one thing we did to try to reduce her intake was to use a puzzle feeder to encourage her to work for her food the company of animals do one it looks like green plastic grass you put the daily allowance of dried food in it and the cat has to paw it out piece by piece to eat it. We use one for our rescue dobe too she used to bolt her food but now she's learned to eat more slowly and its helping to resolve her weight problems. Some vets sell puzzle feeders or you can look online. Not sure if the pet stores have them. Another one we got was the Trixie cat puzzle feeder - its white, has lots of different gaps n holes your cat has to fetch the food out of. Might be worth a try - you can dishwash most puzzle feeders too

 

The puzzle feeders seem to be more interesting than those ball toy things - my lot wont touch a ball but theyre happy to forage from a flat puzzle feeder

[Bluefeline]

Hey, we've had her from being a kitten but she was the runt of the litter and along with that in my opinion she was really really under fed and under weight. When we got her home on the first day I was cooking a piece of beef in the oven. She was hanging on the oven door to get at it. This was in the first 30 seconds of getting her home.

 

I do agree with angel22, she does act like every meal is her last.

[wysiwyg]

Have you had her thyroid levels checked?

[Bluefeline]

No actually I haven't, she is active but I will look into that. Thanks.

Although just thinking about it, she did eat loads and I mean loads of Thorntons chocolates. She had some bloods done then, not sure if they did a general blood test at that time. I will check though.

[midgecat]

Have you had her thyroid levels checked?

 

that's a good point. we've had lots of strays arrive here, and at first they eat as though every meal might be their last. but if its an ongoing issue its worth checking levels. almost sounds as though the signal to say her tummy is full just isn't getting through somehow.

[medusa]

I've seen lots of cats come through various rescues that have this as a behavioural issue after starving for an extended period, but I've never seen it in a cat that has been like it since early kittenhood.

 

I suppose that there's always a chance of there being a feline version of Prader Willi syndrome (which is a human genetic problem that has, amongst its symptoms, an inability to ever feel full) that has not yet been recognised, but yes, please do get her thyroid checked if she's not had it checked recently.

 

As for management, if she's got to be this age and it's not letting up and her thyroid is fine, then I think that you have a genuine case to consider medicating her overnight with a mild sedative just to get her to let up long enough for everybody to get some sleep. If that's not an option then I'd look at whether you can manufacture a space for her to be overnight where she's several doors away from sleeping humans and shut her in there with a time food dispenser that opens every couple of hours with just enough food to keep her quiet. I'm all for positive means generally, but if it's bad enough that she's going to end up without a home then all means are justified IMO.

 

As for during the day, has she got you trained so that if she begs enough you will feed her? Do you feed her at the same intervals every day or when she hassles you?

 

This is a situation where clicker training could well work in the long term, to teach her what behaviour you expect from her. Cats are not well known for their work ethic, but a cat that is sufficiently motivated by food could go really well with it.

 

How it works:

 

Gather together bag of appropriate dried food (ideally quite small sized ones) and clicker and have them with you for an opportune moment when she is quiet. When she is quiet and calm, click the clicker and give her a single crunchie. Repeat lots of times over a couple of days until she gets the message that a click will bring with it food (for dogs they say that the food needs to follow within 3-5 seconds for the dog to associate that the two things are linked, but I've never seen rationale for it or figures for cats).

 

Once you think that she knows that a click is a good thing because food follows, you then set about ignoring her begging and rewarding her silence, dozens of times a day if possible. Feeding happens in the same place at the same times of day all of the time and the only other way she gets food is by being good.

 

As long as you make sure that there is 30 seconds of calm between bad (begging) behaviour and the reward you'll be sure that you're rewarding her for the good (quiet) behaviour and with a bit of luck that will then mean that you can gradually increase the time between rewards and increasing her understanding as you go.

 

When you want to keep her quiet for a while had you considered giving her something that she can't eat straight away, such as the treat toys katkin uses, or a plate smeared with pate, or even a chunk of raw turkey neck that she would have to really chew through? Do any similar things work?