Hi all
I dont know if anyone can help, mainly cos this is a dog board, but i know some of you have cats who may be able to help me. We have a cat "noodles", who we love to peices. We rescued her last january from the vet where I worked when she was brought in as a very skinny, very ill stray. I got her back to great health and a very happy little cat, loving us dearly, but....not so long ago ( a few months ) we had some new neighbours move in...oh my god...who feel the need to feed her constantly, everything under the sun, from salmon ( well excuuuuuuse me for feeding her cat food) to lamb and chicken. It is really driving me mad. The problem is, these people are not the sort who you can just say "stop" to. We do get on well with them but i find it hard to have confrontations with people. She has also "adopted 2 cats from around the corner, and regulary buys them food and cooks for them... she even picks them up from the pavement and walks back to her house to put them on her bed....what oh WHAT do i do. My cat doesnt know where she belongs anymore (although i think i know where she would LIKE to belong). She gets full on food during the day so doesnt want to come in in the eves anymore.....it is a real problem. I put so much work into her, and spent a fortune on opperations etc for her to be well...this is really going to far. Please help. I have tried "please dont feed me" bandanas, and posters saying "dont feed this cat" but i dont know what to do. This lady is lovely but help...please.
thanks
x

Hi i know just how you feel,we had the same problem some years ago ,the neighbours were wonderful and the cat was "having his cake and eating it" we have two daughters who at the time were very young and were so upset at the cats apparent moving next door , but like you we tried every kind way not to have a confrontation ,but thats what we had to do eventually ,it never made a blind bit of differance they moved house and the cat went with them !! We now have a puppy and before her we had two cats(brothers)since the arrival of said puppy both cats got the hump and left home(the puppy does chase a lot ,)but where asone cat has come home ,the other has not ,we know nothing bad has happened to him but he did this once before and it was about a week before he came home again ,i have decided to put letters in to the surrounding houses,for information on him ,why do people insist on taking in and feeding obviously healthy cats who do not belong to them ,we know someone else has him as they have both come home minus collars ,and when we replaced them they too vanished ,!its so upsetting for all of us ,but thats what attracts us to cats .....their independance ,they come and go as they please ,,,good luckwith your problem,but you have to put over how you feel,and sooner than later ,let us know how you get on ,Regards Sue T.

Hi
My Mum had a similar problem with her cat.....neighbour kept feeding it & cat spent more time there than with Mum. Anyway I came up with a solution that worked...may be worth a try although it will involve telling a slightly white lie! :P

Mum went around to the neightbour telling them that the cat had been vomiting all over the carpet & bringing up blood & asked if hed done the same next door. (Knowing full well he hadnt!!) Anyway she did this for a couple of days, then kept the cat in for 48 hours. Then she went back to the neighbour in a distressed state (not!) and told them the bad news. She explained that shed been to the vet & he had said Bluey would DIE if he was given any sort of food other than a special prescription diet. he had a rare stomach problem & normal cat food, tuna, salmon, milk, chicken would KILL him!!! Anyhow she spun this great tale of woe to the neighbour who immediately stopped feeding him.
Worth a try...you may need to tailor it slightly to your own circumstances :)

Ha ha ha, I like that Sam. That is a really good idea. I think we should have to do something like that. It seems to be the only way, because as Sue said, asking them to stop doesnt makea blind bot if differenc.
It is weird though how people feel the need to feed them. I mean, dont get me wrong, we love Noodles to peices, but she is growing a bit of a tummy on her, and is quite obviously very healthy. The thing with the bandanas is that someone kept taking them off, just like you said sue with the collars. I have tried 6 and tied them onto the actual collar very tightly, i even cut holes and looped the collar through...each time, amazingly, I saw her wandering around without them....hmm, now either she has suddenly got EXTREMELY clever....or someone else is taking them off.
It must have been heartbreaking for you sue when your cat moved with the neighbours. I just dont understand some people, I wonder how they would feel if the roles were reversed.
Thanks for your comments and ideas, they are much appreciated, and its good to know Im not alone.
xx

Crumbs, i thought i was teh only one with that problem!

My cat Sailor is admittedly a complete tart! He is far too friendly for his own good, and when a friend comes round, who lives round the corner, Sailor walks him home! He also comes to the shop with me, walks the dogs with me, shares my dinners (not invited too, he just comes up and swipes what he wants, pasta is a favourite!)....... anyways, some people moved in a few doors down, to a flat.

They met Sailor, and commented to me about how friendly he was. I stupidly said, 'yes, hell go home with any one'. They told me how they did have a kitten, but it had fleas so they got rid of it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So i did think they were a bit odd!

Anyways, i noticed Sailor was getting fatter and fatter (he will eat till he pukes, and then eat some more), going from his normally svelte self to being so fat he couldnt slip through the bars of the baby gate in the house!

I cottoned on that they where feeding him, and asked them not too, pointing out how fat he had got. They said ok, and just carried on.
Anyways, this continued, until the day Sailor, waiting on top of the middle neighbours dustbin (a vantage point to see which of the tin opener people came home first, me or them) was grabbed by a wandering GSD, He was so fat, that in jumping off the bin badly, he fractured his leg (well, thats what the vet said, when i described how he landed).
He did a runner, and they came across him first, and brought him round to me, with a 'your cats limping' tale of woe. I bit my tongue and said id keep him in, and if he escaped, could they bring him back and NOT feed him, as it would encourage him to escape again.

Well, the next day he escaped, and they brought him back, AND THEY'D FED HIM AGAIN.
Finaly, i lost the plot with them, and said 'if you want to share the damn cat, you can share the damn vet bills as well!!!!!!'.....

Dont know if it worked, but they moved a couple of weeks later, and now my cat is working on all four cylinders again, and NOT FAT! yay.

Em

As well as the tale of woe (I loved that idea :D) you could suggest that as they like cats so much, maybe they'd like to adopt the (most in need) cat at the vets, as you know they'll take good care of it. This may take their minds off feeding other peoples cats.

Hi, what a brilliant idea of Sams, if only i knew where Enzo was i would try it , i know hes put out about Lola(the dog) but Charlie (his brother)has sort of come to an understanding!!!!!,i also agree about the vet fees ,as the neighbour in question with me had the nerve to call me when when the cat had a punch up with another tom and said ,"it looks nasty ,i think you should take him to the vets" i hope you get it all sorted out ,personaly i would try Sams idea .......BRILLIANT . let us know how everything goes,good luck Sue T. x

Can you not make your cat an inside cat so that it does not meet up with this women during the day at all. I live in an apartment and have three full grown cats of the following ages: 5 yrs, 4 yrs and 10mths. They only go outside onto my balcony. They have three covered litter pans in my house which they are very good about using as their bathroom. I give them lots of cat-proof toys as well they play run and chase games amongst themselves for exercise. This would immediately end the extra food being served to your cat which of course he will eat but is not required. If you want to could build a play house cage in your garden with lots of climbing toys and regular toys for outside exercise. If you have other cats they could learn to stay with this cat who would welcome a playmate. I had one on my balcony until one of the apartment owners took exception to it and it had to be removed.

There are always other options to allowing a cat to become obese and losing it's connection with it's primary household.

Give it a try and you will be amazed by the results.

Margaret :) Canada

Thanks Margaret.
Your right. I actually told everyone who lives in my cul-de-sac not to feed her as she is poorly and on a special vet diet as was suggested earlier in the thread...I was hoping it would work (because i thoguht people cared about her) but still I see plate of food left ou for her and she has another house over the fence which she likes going to, she spends a lot of time there too.
I think your idea is my only hope now really.
I shall keep u posted on how it works. I would rather have a healthy cat than an unhappy obese one...I guess I just have to be vigilant and not let other people get the better of her.
Thanks for your help
steph
x

Hi Steph,
I had the exact same problem withe the lady in the house behind ours, she seems to think she needs to feed ALL the cats in the neighbourhood! She fed our ginger cat, who obviously prefered her cat food, so he never came home. When he did come home i tried keeping him in, but as he'd been a farm cat he literally went up the wall! I tried going to speak to the lady, but she never answered the door to me but funnily enough the cat always appeared over the garden fence five minutes later! Finally we caught the cat and he went to live with my boyfriends mum, where he is much loved and we can see him regularly. It had become such a battle of wills that i was determined to win! We have since got 2 cats, both pedigree, which we keep inside with plenty of toys. We are also planning to put up a cat-run so they can go out too, without the risk of losing them! Good luck with your situation, i'm sure you will resolve it. Cats do really adapt well to living inside, plus there's none of the danger of being run over etc.

Erin

Hi Steph

I don't know whether to admit this or not but when I was expecting my first child a cat started coming round to the window of our house and yowling to be let in. Eventually one rainiy night we let him in and he stayed overnight with us, and didn't want to leave. I have to say I was never much of a cat person but I did quickly fall in love with this one, and because it visited us so often we began to wonder if it was a stray or lost and we began to feed him regularly. Months later we got a knock on the door from an old man who lived accross the road and down the street and it transpired that the cat belonged to him and his wife and he was actually 12 years old (we had thought him quite kittenish) and he simply said that it was making them both very sad that after all this time the cat was straying away and asked us very politely if we would stop feeding it. I can tell you I felt absolutely terrible that we'd upset these people like this even though we had never meant any harm and we didn't feed him or let him in again and he returned to his rightful owners.

Maybe just a simple admission to this person of how sad this is making you feel might seem less like a confrontation.

Good luck
Cathryn

The same thing has happened with one of my cats.
When I used to live at my mum's I had two feral kittens, both from the same litter, one tabby, one blue.
My mum's neighbour has been feeding Casper, the blue, ever since we had him. Now Casper doesn't come in the house any more, whereas Harvey, the tabby, is very much a house cat.

We had a bit of a scare when Casper became ill, and the vet put him on a special diet for a few weeks. On knocking the neighbours door, to ask them not to feed him anymore, they swore that "Smokey" was their cat, not ours! Even though we has actually paid for him ourselves, and had footed the vets bills, neutering bills ever since!

We solved the problem by saying - fine - you can pay the bill for this diet then, and they refused. Casper still goes round there, but his name has stayed Casper, and he returns home more often than ever :)

We've had exactly the problem you've mentioned - a cat 'losing his connection to his primary household' ... and he's one that we've tried in the past to keep inside. He goes manic, wees on everything and bullies the other two cats (who seem perfectly happy to keep us as their people)...

Long story short, though, even though we've asked all 'round our neighborhood, everyone only says 'oh, we saw him in our garden yesterday' ... not that they're feeding him or taking care of him even though he's got a collar with a tag on it with his name, our address and phone number. I don't know what to do about him, to be honest - he abdicated when we brought the dog's crate downstairs (and putting the crate back upstairs isn't an option, unfortunately) and hasn't been around much since. Every time we've seen him, he's STILL been wearing his collar, though.

It is very hard, I cant understand why people do it....especially if they have been asked to stop. :(
I have since discovered that the house over the fnce was leaving plates of "food" out for noodles (my cat) and tempting her away from us. Last night I just broke down and got SO angry! 3 nights she had been gone and she was always so loving of us! I hadnt seen her and was so worried. I grabbed a chair and ran to the fence (it was now chucking it down with rain) and yelled her name, doing this, I saw the woman who I knew was leaving the food out and she was watching from behind her back door. My neighbour came out and asked what was wrong, I said very loudly that some *$@%!!~# had stolen my cat and so on. Then all of a sudden, my cat came flying through the air all arms and legs everywhere...she had been thrown over the fence...she was terrified. My other half and I wer running around trying to get her because she was absolutely beside herself. We managed to get her, I brought her in, snuggled her into her vet bed and got a huge bowl of lovely food for her on a dish (the first thing i grabbed). She looked at it and seemed to be very afraid. I spent ages with her, I then picked the food up on my fingers and she gulped it down...she seemed very afraid of the food that was o the plate though, I dont know if the people had fed her something nasty, she looked very thin and just not "noodles". I am going to keep her in for a while now and help her to get over it....also, my other half anf neighbours are going to try and et something done about this whole thing (but i dont know how much hope i hold out)

well, just thought i would update you all.
steph, millie (very happy doggy cos her best friend is back) and noodles (thin, tired but getting better)
x

So glad to hear you've got noodles back! Your story sounds so like mine, i would get so frustrated because i could see colin (cat named by my boyfriend NOT me!) from my bedroom window sat in the ladies garden, if i called him her curtains would twitch and every time i saw her she had a can of cat food in hand. I'm not sure she even has a cat of her own, but she must spend a fortune on cat food. When we did get colin back he was very withdrawn, didn't want anything to do with us, but now he's living with my boyfriends mum he's old personality has really come back and we have lovely snuggles from him again. Good luck with noodles, i'm sure she'll be feeling right at home in no time at all!

Erin

Thanks Erin.
She maybe didnt have a cat, cos I dont think the woman here does. I think it is like "i dont have one of my own...so i shall steal someone elses".
Can you imagine if that was a child!? I mean, they would be arrested, but cos it is a cat, it is seen as acceptable.
Oh well, I am really glad that your cat is back to his old self again. I think I would have done exactly what you did. Anything, just so that the woman stops feeding him. well.
take care
steph
x

p.s, cathryn...I wish that the woman round here was as nice as you. You seem as though you genuinely cared about the cat.x

Glad Noodles is back with you again.

Best wishes
Cathrynx