[rachelsf]

Hi everyone,

My husband and I adopted a 1-year-old male cat a few weeks ago. He's adjusting well but has a big problem begging for food. I feed him 1/3 can wet food (that's all he eats at a time) twice a day (morning and evening) and leave dry food out at all times. He loves the wet food and only eats the dry stuff when he's out of the wet food. However, his dry food dish is never empty, which makes me think he's not starving.

Whenever my husband and I are in the kitchen, the cat is right there begging for food. If we leave food unattended, he's all over it. Yesterday, I greased a baking dish with coconut oil, turned around for a minute, and he was on the counter licking the dish. The other day, I caught him just before he walked over a still-hot burner on the stove to get at something. Other than what he sneaks, we don't feed him people food.

It seems like the longer we've had him, the more aggressive he gets with sneaking food. This evening, my husband had friends over, and the cat jumped on the coffee table and stuck his head in a bag of chips. One of our friends tried to shake the bag to scare him, but he was not deterred.

What can we do to stop this behaviour?

I should also mention that we live in a small apartment, so we don't want to restrict the cat's access to parts of the apartment. I also feel that squirting him with water is mean.

Thanks!
Rachel