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  #1  
Old July 19th, 2004, 12:21 PM
Jules82 Jules82 is offline
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Exclamation Is anyone out there going to even try to help me!!!

I have a 1yr old cat and a 17 week old kitten. We feed the cat a indoor formula and the kitten a kitten formula. my problem is that the wiskers (cat) wants to eat the kittens (freckles) food and freckles wants to eat wiskers. wiskers isn't eating anything but the kitten formula but the kitten is eating both.
I have heard that if you put water and lemon juice together and spray it in the cats mouth when they are doing somthing bad that they will stop doing it. Is that true and does lemon juice hurt the cat.
i need some way of getting them both to eat thier own food because the kitten is to young to eat the cat formula food.
If you have any ideas please help.
I have tried to have them eat in different rooms and even at different levels but my cat wiskers still finding it and eating it no matter what.
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  #2  
Old July 19th, 2004, 12:36 PM
Sunkist/Winnie Sunkist/Winnie is offline
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Location: Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
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I have two cats, they are a year apart in age. When I got Sunkist (my youngest) Winnie (the oldest) was on regular food, but kitten food was what she wanted. I tried everything to get each cat to eat the food they were supposed to eat.

What I ended up doing was:

I fed Winnie her adult food in the kitchen. Winnie is a pig and she eats her food right away, so there wasn't that much left for Sunkist to eat.

Sunkist's food was put inside a closet with her water. I had the door open enough so Sunkist could fit in, but Winnie couldn't. I had to use weights so Winnie couldn't push the door open any wider.

This worked until they were roughly the same size, at which time Sunkist was older enough to switch to adult food. To this day, Winnie is interested in what food is in Sunkist's dish and Sunkist is interested in what is in Winnie's dish...which makes no sense to me as it's the exact same thing.

I was fortunate that I only had to figure out a way to keep Sunkist out of Winnie's dish, unlike your problem where each cat needs to stay out of the other's dish. Maybe by separating them into different rooms and making it hard for the older cat to get to the kitten's food, the older cat will go back to eating her own food...and the kitten will have to eat the kitten food that's in an area the older cat can't get to.

I tried quite a few things before I came up with this idea. Watching them eat to make sure they stayed out of each other's dish wasn't an option, as Sunkist is a grazer eating a mouthful every now and then and Winnie just inhales the stuff.

Hope this helps.
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  #3  
Old July 19th, 2004, 12:52 PM
Goldenmom Goldenmom is offline
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Location: Waterloo, Ontario
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The only thing you can do is to keep them separated during feeding. Keep one in the bathroom or somewhere while the other eats. Nothing else you can do. It won't hurt them to cry while the other is eating. Most people with a young animal and and older one go through this until the younger one can eat the adult food.

Also, Never, ever, squirt lemon in their mouths. They will associate this with thinking they are bad for eating, period.... They don't know the difference between foods, only you do! Separate them and then you don't need to be doing any disciplining.


Heather
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Old July 19th, 2004, 12:56 PM
Goldenmom Goldenmom is offline
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One more thing....

You need to be more patient on this forum. There is not always a lot of people on here at once, and the ones on may not know the answer to your question.

Heather
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  #5  
Old July 19th, 2004, 01:12 PM
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Luba Luba is offline
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Quote:
Is anyone out there going to even try to help me
People help when and where they can this is a volunteer forum
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Cats only have nine lives because they stole them from dogs!Teehee
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  #6  
Old July 19th, 2004, 01:22 PM
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glasslass glasslass is offline
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Hi! I'm sorry I'm not always in front of the computer. You may see me logged on, but I tend to check all the new posts and then leave the computer on while I go about my other activities, checking back from time to time. When I'm at work, I am fortunate in having a computer in front of me but my employer is funny in that he expects me to be working. Weird, huh? But in between duties, I can manage to sneak peeks and often take my breaks at my desk.

As young as your older cat is, I don't really see the harm if Winnie does manage to get some of the kitten's food. Feeding them in separate rooms is a good idea too. The kitten food is a higher protein formula for a developing kitten, but a 1 yr old is not going to be injured by it. On the other hand, the kitten does need the extra.
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