Cat Behaviors: Eating Out and Breaking the Bag of Cat Food
We had a guest cat who lived with us for a while and brought some strange feline behavior with him. One of the things he does is bite and scratch the cat food in the bag, even if the bowl is full. I think it’s a game for him, but he makes a real mess. It doesn’t stop until he opens it up and spreads it all over the floor.
Now he’s not our cat, but I figure he needs to live by our rules. We could put out the food but now we have two cats and our cat Sid eats out of the bowl and we can leave the bag of cat food on the floor next to where we feed the cats. It’s convenient for us and that’s the way we humans like it.
When we trained our Sid from a kitten, we had certain rules in mind and those were the cat behaviors we worked to teach him.
These are cat behaviors that we think any cat in our house should obey (and Sid does).
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Eat cat food from a bowl and not from the bag of food
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Know your name and come when called (at least most of the time)
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stay away from the sink
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Use the cat box at all times
Do not bite the hand that feeds you
When it came to the new Tabby cat, he needed some discipline, so we started working with him after a period of time, at least until we knew he was comfortable in our house. We used the same tactics that we used with Sid, as they worked quite well on him. There are many lines of thought to train a cat, but this is what we did,
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We use repetition when we teach him his name, call him a lot and all be consistent. Don’t use similar-sounding words when calling your cat. Continue until you get an answer.
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Teach them the word NO. Again be consistent and get an answer. Everyone should use the same word, not stop or not do that, stay with the same word.
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To bite use OUCH or NO and out loud. Make sure you don’t pet your cat to the point that he has had enough. They will bite to tell you to stop. Sometimes they just want to sit on your lap.
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We use a water bottle for really stubborn behavior. A quick spray and a strong NO will work great. All we have to do now is pick up the water bottle if Sid is misbehaving.
Using all of the above, we have taught Tabby to leave the bag of cat food alone and eat from the bowl. She has also learned to recognize her name much better and she comes to me sometimes, all are great developments as Tabby has been an outside cat and her internal manners needed improving.