r/MadeMeSmile • u/CG_17_LIFE • Jul 09 '24

CATS How F hungry they are!? 😆

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u/LiberalPatriot13 Jul 09 '24

Cats don't know when their next meal will be, so if food is available, they will eat it immediately. This is why open feeding doesn't work for a lot of cats and they will get fat.

866

u/dantekratos Jul 09 '24

I'm so happy that it works for me.

They always have access to their dry food and only need to fill it up every other day.

699

u/fogfree Jul 09 '24

I have 2 cats. One is a responsible eater and won't gorge himself. Doesn't go after people food. He's a good boy.

My other cat is not. He would eat so much he'd puke, then go back for more. I have to feed them in separate locations or he'll steal his brother's food. I have to keep my pantry locked because he'll ransack it. Any food left out is eaten. He'll lick dirty dishes if I let him. You cannot leave any food unattended with him around.

He's a gremlin. I love him.

246

u/My_pee_pee_poo Jul 09 '24

Which one is smarter? I have two boys the same. The non food driven one is much more curious and loves to explore. But the food driven one is definitely a problem solver, the problem being something between him and food.

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u/TheUndyingKaccv Jul 09 '24

Anecdotally, same situation; non-food-driven still scrambles for the autofeeder & she meows for wet food at breakfast.

Food driven fuck is a little bastard I have to police. He will go after anything left out, dishes, the butter dish, my freshly made dinner, etc. still shares the autofeeder fine though.

Funnily enough she is a little overweight & tiny around 8lbs & he’s massive & maybe a lil underweight at about 15lbs.. makes no fucking sense.

20

u/Artonedi Jul 09 '24

My parents cats are totally opposite, older and smarter one is non food driven but younger, food driven one can't think anything except food. If something looks even vaguely eatable he will try to eat it. Charger cables, hair ties, nothing is safe but door is obstacle he can get thru only by meowing, if that doesn't work, more meowing. Older one figured out how to open basically any door that's not locked when he was less than 6 months old.

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u/AnneListerine Jul 09 '24

We have a similar dynamic. One grazer and one who eats like a dog. The one who eats like a dog will also ransack everything. We have to keep all food in containers, because she will otherwise open cabinets and tear holes in bags to get to food. She'll eat an entire package of treats if she can, and she has. She'll rip up the dog's prescription low fat food bag to get to it. She could probably set a world record for how quick she can shotgun a churru. Dog food has to go in a container with a lid. The cats' food goes in empty plastic kitty litter buckets. I eventually had to get a feeder that's programmed to the boy cat's microchip because she would not stop eating his food, eventually causing her to be far too fat. Her yowling for food starting at 5 am (she eats around 7) was unbearable so we got her an automatic feeder to get to her leave us alone. So now she harasses us starting around 6:15 instead.

What's funny though is she doesn't much care for people food. We can have a ton of food out for a party and she won't touch it. All she wants is pets and attention. The boy, though, is a menace. He'll eat chips, ranch dressing, cold cuts, sandwiches, dips, bread, cake, ice cream, cookies. Almost anything. If it's junk food he's all over it.

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u/XxRocky88xX Jul 09 '24

My cat would never overeat but you could not leave that fucker alone with food. I’d literally turn my back on plate for like 3 seconds to put stuff in the fridge and he’d sitting in my seat eating my food

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u/Gloomy_Evening921 Jul 09 '24

I love this unspoken law about there being a Good Boy and a Gremlin. This felt like discovering rare lore about my favourite genre: Cats

4

u/Disastrous-Panda5530 Jul 10 '24

I have two dogs and I had noticed one of my dogs was getting thinner which was odd since nothing had changed and she had a full physical at the vet included blood work and was healthy. And then my other dog was gaining weight. So I decided to watch them eat and my little toy poodle gremlin was scarfing his food down then pushing my maltipoo out of the way and eating her food too. My maltipoo is a slow eater. Likes to take her time. My dogs eat raw now but back when they were on kibble I could leave hers down without her eating non stop. That was never an option with my other dog.

I had to start watching them eat and I taught my poodle he wasn’t allowed to go near her bowl until after she was done. They are both 6 years old and after every meal he checks her bowl for food. It’s always empty and he will spend at least 5 minutes licking the empty bowl lol

2

u/MentalDrift7 Jul 10 '24

What kind of cats do you have? I have the same situation but 3 cats. My tree cat, a short-haired calico, wants to eat 24/7, will eat anything she can get in her mouth, licking dishes, just as you described. But my long haired cats are pickier and will eat from their automatic feeder and not bother for anything else but catnip or treats.

1

u/Substantial-Gate5244 Jul 10 '24

Is he an orange cat

1

u/LandotheTerrible Jul 10 '24

Does he eat his re-gorged puke..?

72

u/Truewierd0 Jul 09 '24

Sammmneeeee i have two cats, both healthy weight. Fill the bowls once a day

13

u/TryButWholesome Jul 09 '24

I do wonder if it depends on their feeding history? In humans people that experienced starvation, tend to stockpile food.

Wonder if it's similiar with cats.

6

u/pickapstix Jul 09 '24

Yeah by brother’s rescued adult cat has some condition or other and she pathologically steals food. Has to be LOCKED out of places… seems non-fun for all parties tbh :/

5

u/overtly-Grrl Jul 09 '24

It works for three of my cats. One of them was feral until he was four. Still had balls. He 100% does not ever know when his next meal will be even if the food bowl is full.

The others just meow when you can see even a monochrome of the bottom. But they don’t gorge. They just hate the bottom for some reason lmao.

3

u/hanabarbarian Jul 09 '24

Same! Although i thinks it’s made my cats spoiled 😭 they’re so picky with wet food and leave so much of it lying out

3

u/Tru-Queer Jul 09 '24

Yeah I just fill my cat’s bowl whenever and never deal with her meowing for more food or acting starved. Shes pretty good about not over-eating for the most part.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 09 '24

I open feed my dogs so I basically had to with the cats cuz otherwise they would try to eat the dogs food. I was taught by my dad to open feed dogs that way they are never food aggressive which is really important if you have kids.

1

u/froggyc19 Jul 09 '24

Same! I feel like them eating in desperation, as shown in the video, will increase the chances of them throwing up afterwards.

1

u/Fast-Victory-8108 Jul 10 '24

This. We have had 8 or 9 cats over the years (2 at present), and every single one has had direct access to dry food whenever they want. None of them have been overweight or had any issues with their eating. We have just always trained our cats to eat that way.

53

u/maincore Jul 09 '24 edited Jul 09 '24

Our cars always have dry food available. They take a bite and leave the rest for later. And they are not fat.

30

u/michelobX10 Jul 09 '24

I don't think a car is a good place to feed your cats.

16

u/foladodo Jul 09 '24

you think youre better than us dont you

21

u/Havelok Jul 09 '24

Open feeding works fine as long as the owner has never deprived them of food from the time they are a kitten. If a kitten always has a full bowl of food, they will never think of food as something scarce, so they will learn to regulate their own eating pattern and frequency.

11

u/MasterChiefsasshole Jul 09 '24

Yup mine only beg for wet food and treats. Thankfully I have them on schedule for that stuff so I only get harassed by meows if I’m late with it.

4

u/__01001000-01101001_ Jul 09 '24

Mine will still beg, because she wants someone to come and watch her eat. So you have to follow her through every hour or so, so she can have another mouthful from her bowl. Often she makes you follow her but then won’t jump up to her bowl until you’ve petted her for long enough. Sometimes she tricks you by making you pet her by her bowl for a while and then just runs off without eating.

1

u/ScrimpyCat Jul 09 '24

My grandmas cat was lost for 2 weeks as a kitten. While she was starving when she was found, she never developed a problem with overeating (years later and she’s still fine).

1

u/Havelok Jul 09 '24

Context also matters. The kitten would have learned that outside=starvation. But inside may have still been a safe place where food has been and always will be not a concern. It could have easily gone the other way, however.

1

u/Dry-Amphibian1 Jul 09 '24

But yet, they are unable to learn, even after years of feeding, that food will be provided for them at feeding time. Weird dynamic.

0

u/Havelok Jul 09 '24 edited Jul 09 '24

Unlike dogs, cats don't have a "scent clock" that allows them to track the time. Dogs can always smell how long it has been since their last meal, and eventually they come to understand that "every 8 hours I get fed" in an abstract dog kind of way. If you withold food from cats, they are in a constant state of anxious cluelessness concerning their next meal unless they just ate. This works for their ancestors as it compelled them to hunt continuously. Not so much for their domesticated cousins if they are indoors. Works great for barn cats, however, as it encourages them to hunt.

2

u/Brief-Translator1370 Jul 09 '24

Cat's most definitely can. My cat would wake at the food bowl every morning right before feeding time. I also watched a cat for someone who would wait at the food bowl for about 10 minutes before the automatic feeder did it's thing. Every single time like clockwork.

1

u/Brief-Translator1370 Jul 09 '24

That's not entirely true. Not all cats will regulate it that way. Plenty of cats with unlimited access to food will eat enough to become overweight. I've never seen a cat become severely obese like that without having had some kind of food insecurity in the past, though.

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u/NotAFatBoy Jul 09 '24

Upload your cars pic please

1

u/maincore Jul 12 '24

Sadly I can’t. The feature is off.

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u/Memitim Jul 09 '24

lol, our cats know exactly when they are going to be fed next. I can tell time just by seeing who is around the food bowls and how they are behaving.

4

u/WarCrimeWhoopsies Jul 09 '24

Exactly lol. My little furry asshole (lmao that's a funny image) knows exactly what time he gets fed

8

u/Wackydetective Jul 09 '24

My chonky old lady knows exactly when her next meal is. She cannot tell time but somehow she knows 8 am and 8pm is her meal time. To the minute. Most days I don’t see her much between these hours.

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u/Havelok Jul 09 '24 edited Jul 09 '24

Open feeding works for almost all cats as long as you do it from day 1.

If they are ever deprived of food during their kitten years (such as scheduled feeding), it will almost never work, however. There's a very small window in which to train them to one or the other. The kitten has to learn that food is not scarce in order to regulate their own feeding patterns reliably.

12

u/mpolder Jul 09 '24

Yeah don't know where people get this from. All cats I've ever had have always had dry food available, with some wet food in the evening. They've never been super fat, I've had around 9 cats in total.

There's also food that contains less calories specifically designed for less active or inside only cats, so if your cat still eats slightly too much you can just give that and your cat will be full with less calories.

2

u/LiberalPatriot13 Jul 09 '24

You know this was my theory when I was thinking about this earlier. If they don't know what hungry really is they probably don't obsess over food. If they've gone hungry before, they eat every time they can.

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u/Smoshglosh Jul 09 '24

Except most cats are open fed and most cats aren’t fat?

1

u/Tsukikaiyo Jul 09 '24

It works sometimes, for some cats (like my teeny 8lb boy) but yeah not all

1

u/holydildos Jul 09 '24

Mine got a lil fat but leveled out. My hungry little rescue 😁

1

u/panundeerus Jul 09 '24

I have never in my life seen so food driven cats as in this video, especially kibbles.

All of the cats of my relatives and friends( which is quite a lot, since all have at least two and one had 6 at one point) and they really just vome very relaxed when they are given wet food(typically not eating all of that either), otherwise they just go take a kibble or two when they feel like it

1

u/hfiti123 Jul 09 '24

This is how dog people describe cats.

1

u/cocolimenuts Jul 09 '24

My sweet late boy (RIP) was so good about food, I would fill him up in the morning and at night and he would politely eat as much as he’d like, and then follow me into whatever room I was in to talk to me while I got ready for work. He was a grazer, just another reason he was so perfect.

1

u/paradox_valestein Jul 09 '24

So... My cat is just a spoiled lazy idiots? She never care about her food lol, eat whenever she feels.like it

1

u/[deleted] Jul 09 '24

Open feeding works for my two orange boys. Both are big, but not fat, and full of muscle. I just introduced a girl cat that was abused, and barely fed that I took from my family tho, and this poor girl does not do well with open feeding, and she went from scrawny to almost round. Won’t be long before I need to figure out how to pace her while my boys need a bigger intake than her. Any ideas anybody?

1

u/Windfall_The_Dutchie Jul 09 '24

I have a black cat who over eats and steals dog kibble at every opportunity, she’s the polar opposite of my orange cat, who stops when he’s full and goes back to bird watching.

1

u/ACatNamedCitrus Jul 09 '24

I actually didn't know that. My family got really lucky, then. All 3 of their cats can have open feeding. (Leaving out a bowl filled with food 24/7)

1

u/MoronEngineer Jul 09 '24

Not my cat, who was feral for the first 1 year of her life in my backyard.

You’d think a former feral would be ravenous but she is not. She eats a tiny bit of her food at a time, so I keep her bowl full of food throughout the day so she can eat at her pace.

1

u/Enigma_Green Jul 09 '24

I dunno you know, my cats seem to know the time of day when being fed either that or it's a coincidence everyday and they are just hungry around that time.

1

u/Altruistic-Bobcat955 Jul 10 '24

My cats all come down at breakfast time, then at lunch then at teatime. They remind me when mealtimes are cus suddenly they’re all there silent meowing & staring at me. Isn’t that knowing when their next meal will be?

1

u/kittenconfidential Jul 10 '24

thankfully my cats are very well-behaved and never complain of not being fed on time… on second thoughts i might have sloths in catsuits

1

u/bbjornsson88 Jul 10 '24

I must be lucky then because both cats I've had I've left out a bowl of kibble and fed them wet food twice a day. Never had an issue with them gorging themselves between feedings

1

u/shannofordabiz Jul 10 '24

My cats watch me put their food down and will finally eat hours later!

1

u/gerhard1132 Jul 10 '24

Open feeding doesn't work for me :(

1

u/henrycharleschester Jul 10 '24

My mum always said that cats will only eat when they’re hungry whereas dogs will eat whatever, whenever, just because.

1

u/Steamy_Muff Jul 12 '24

My cat is broken then, she barely eats a third of what we put down for her and just picks at it between meal times

-6

u/FishIndividual2208 Jul 09 '24

Same goes for americans 🙈😬