Wedding Etiquette Forum

Really stupid cat food question

I feel like an idiot asking this, but where does your cat eat? Our dog seems to think cat food > dog food, and he'll raid the cat's bowl.

For a few years, the cat has been eating on top of one of our dressers. He can jump up there, but the dog can't. The dog food and water bowl is in the kitchen, in case it matters.

While redoing our bedroom, we found quite the stash of cat food behind the dresser. Even with the bowl being placed in a tray, he still manages to get it everywhere. Obviously, we need to fine a new spot for him to eat, since I don't plan on moving furniture every day to clean up after him.

I'm probably overlooking something extraordinarily simple. Any suggestions?

Re: Really stupid cat food question

  • The door to our basement has a pet door in it. We keep the kitty litter in the basement, and his food is on the stairway going down. This keeps the dog out of the cat food, but now our problem is the cat eating the dog's very expensive organic food. Guess we can't win.

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  • edited January 2012
    If you have it on top of the dresser, you can always put the bowls in a big tray or pan, or hell, even a different litter box.  That might stop or at least make it harder for kitty to drop food all over the place.

    ETA:  You already have it in a tray, so maybe something deeper?
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  • We have stackable bins for the dog and cat food, and we put the cat's food on top of them.  The bottom bin also has a lock through the latch so that dogs can't nose it open. 
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  • Thanks for the suggestions. Adamar, please tell me more about these bins.
  • Do you have a room that you can baby gate off so the cat can jump in and out but the dog can't?

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  • Whisky eats in the kitchen, but that does you no good since we don't have a dog he has to compete with.

    Have you tried feeding him on a plate rather than a bowl? I read that it's annoying for cats to eat out of a bowl because the sides hit their whiskers, which bothers them. So oftentimes cats will knock food out of their plates to eat it off the floor, or knock the bowl over altogether (Whisky did this). After we switched him to a plate, he stopped slinging his food everywhere.
  • I have these: link.  I guess we have the medium size ones, because we buy the 40 pound bags of food and they fit in there fine.
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  • J, I would love to go crazy with a baby gate, but my H refuses. He used to have a sleepwalking problem, and I think he fell over one. We do not own one, and he refuses to buy another. Weirdo. :)

    Sesh, that's a good tip about the plate. I'll try that with him. He does tend to drop a mouthful right next to the bowl, then eat it there.
  • raes19raes19 member
    Eighth Anniversary 1000 Comments
    edited January 2012
    We had also considered buying one of these to put the cat food in, but our dog is small enough that he would probably fit through and decided not to try it.
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  • Now I'm tempted to cut a hole in the door of the laundry closet. Hmm. Ideas...
  • Our cat also just eats in the kitchen because he doesn't have a dog to compete with.  My mom's cats eat on top of the dryer, though.  Would that be an option?

    Sesh - that's interesting about the plate.  Blizz eats his moist out of a bowl with no issues, but he does drop his dry on the floor.  Then again, he drinks water out of our glasses rather than out of his bowl; and the glasses have a smaller opening, so who knows

  • No name eats on the floor in the kitchen at the end of the peninsula.  Doesn't help you much.  When I lived at home, the cats went upstairs and the dogs stayed downstairs and we had the stairs baby gated off. 
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  • Years ago we got a new kitten.  We realized that our older cat was putting on weight.  She would go and sneak his kitten food.  A vetrenarian friend suggested we keep the kitten food in a box with a hole cut in that the older cat wouldn't be able to fit into.  It work out well.  Now my engineer husband did have to design quite the box for the food that included a window, but a normal person could just cut a hole into a storage box.
  • raes19raes19 member
    Eighth Anniversary 1000 Comments
    edited January 2012
    In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/wedding-boards_etiquette_really-stupid-cat-food-question?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Wedding BoardsForum:9Discussion:7f6c8a87-5769-44fb-92a6-e9e8506e0bc0Post:53d35384-a285-4e52-b1fe-7490c4d025f7">Re: Really stupid cat food question</a>:
    [QUOTE]Now I'm tempted to cut a hole in the door of the laundry closet. Hmm. Ideas...
    Posted by specialk84[/QUOTE]

    We have something similar to <a href="http://www.petco.com/product/102309/PetSafe-Plastic-Pet-Door.aspx" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">this</a> for our basement door, except ours has a hard flap instead of a soft one.
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  • Our cat eats wherever I am, I move her bowl around with me, so I can 'guard' it.

    If I put it up high for her, she has a tendancy to chuck it off and eat it off the floor (and Nimo generally gets to it also). I tried feeding her upstairs, but Nimo, who is scared of the stairs, would negotiate them just to get her food. I tried feeding her on the kitchen island (I'm OCD cleaning the kitchen so it was NBD to me), but got the chucking off problem and H pitched a fit about her eating up there (I was at my wits end that day trying to find somewhere the poor cat could eat).

    Wouldn't be so bad if she ate all at once but she grazes. Until Nimo gets close to her, then she gluttons and gets sick.

    Dog's annoying though. They get their food at the same time (he eats shut in his cage because he's comfortable that way) and then he comes out when he's done and wants a piece of everyone elses too. I can't decide if its a dog thing, or if we're not feeding him enough.
  • Thor eats on top of the washer and we've got a mat thing that his food typically can't get off of if he takes it out of his bowl. Like a litter matt thing. He likes to eat X and Gator's food though and they share a water dish (does this make me a horrible mom?).

    The laundry room is where everything cat related is =)
  • rlavachrlavach member
    1000 Comments Second Anniversary 5 Love Its
    edited January 2012
    Well, we have 6 cats (yeah, I know), and 3 eat separately. Chase is old & crazy. She easily gets so agitated that she'll throw up. So, she has her own room to sleep in at night. How cozy. She eats alone in her room. 

    Shizu is getting older & gets nervous when there are too many other cats by her bowl. She eats alone in the bathroom. Rocky has bladder issues, so he's on prescription food. In order to avoid cross eating, we feed him alone in another bathroom. 

    The other three eat on 3 separate dishes in the kitchen. They are all rather agressive with food & often race to the finish so they can eat each other's food. Since they're al like that, it balances out. We can't let them eat with the others, though, or else they'd eat all their food before they could.

    EDIT: For a long time we didn't know that the stronger cats were eating all the food until we saw 2 getting too plump & the others getting too skinny. We watched them eat & saw the problem. Now everyone is back at a healthy weight.
  • Well, we don't have a dog or any other animal to disturb Baxter's food, but our cat food is just in the basement. I like the idea of a box only big enough for that cat but cats love boxes and food might wind up everywhere anyway.
  • edited January 2012
    My parents used to put it in the laundry room, on the dryer.

    Now, my mom keeps it in her bedroom (well, her bathroom, which is attached), and the cats have free range of the house during the day. The dog is gated off from the rest of the house in the kitchen/laundry room/mud room. When the dog is set free and can roam the house in the evening, the cats are just put in the bedroom with the food and litter.

    We only have cats, but right now they are fed separately. Sam is fed in his normal spot and the food is left out all day (I have to measure what he eats). Delilah is locked in the bedroom all day. She sleeps there anyway, and barely seems to notice.
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  • When we moved into our one-bedroom apartment, we tried the dresser, but our cat is old and got lonely eating in there. So now he eats where I keep all my coffee things. I have a counter dedicated to only coffee and tea. This is such a hassel though, because I'm constantly having to disinfect that area. Just remember, wherever you let your cat eat, his paws go from the litterbox to his "dinner table."
  • cindyn9178cindyn9178 member
    1000 Comments 5 Love Its
    edited January 2012
    I don't have a dog, so our cats' food is just in a bowl in the kitchen on the floor..but this is a new one for me.. I've never heard of putting a cat's food up on top of something that they have to jump on to eat it.. just not sure why you would want to give them a reason to jump on things. Cat's jump on enough things they aren't supposed to like the kitchen counters, dining room table, etc. By feeding them on top of a counter, they are just going to think it is ok to keep jumping on stuff like that. Just doesn't make sense to me.
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