How to stop one cat from eating another cat's special food
Cats with different diets often sneak over and steal each other's specialized meals, turning a grazer into a fast eater and forcing owners to physically lock up the greedy cat so the other can eat in peace. This constant theft makes it impossible to maintain separate prescription or wet food diets without round-the-clock supervision.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Feeding cats manually only when home before and after workDid this help you?
- 2Unplugging and stopping the use of timed automatic wet food feedersDid this help you?
- 3Placing bowls in high locations to keep athletic cats away from restricted foodDid this help you?
- 4Locking the greedy cat in the bathroom while feeding the other catDid this help you?
- 5Using microchip or RFID automatic feeders that only open for a specific catDid this help you?
- 6Feeding cats at different times and in separate rooms / quarantining catsDid this help you?
- 7Removing leftover food immediately so the glutton cannot eat it, forcing the grazer to adapt to a scheduleDid this help you?
- 8Using RFID or microchip-activated feeding bowls.Did this help you?
- 9Feeding pets separately based on when they are present at the bowl.Did this help you?
- 10Stopping free-feeding of dry food.Did this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“The problem is that when my female cat leaves food behind, my male cat immediately swoops in and eats it.”source ↗
“She self-regulates really well, but she just can't graze if he eats all her leftovers.”source ↗
“The lady had put on weight lately, if we put out both cats food and her brother isn't around, she will eat both”source ↗
“Any tips on how to help her lose weight, not eat her brothers food?!!”source ↗
“I have the exact same problem as you, with one glutton and one grazer”source ↗
“Because now Reveil has snuck over and ate from Biddys wet food enough times that now she ALSO really enjoys the wet food LMAO….. so much so that Reveil wouldn’t bother with her dry food and would go over to Buddy’s wet food.”source ↗
“i too lock up my panda pig of a cat (scarfer) so my old princess can eat in peace (shes a grazer)”source ↗
“My only issue with this one is it won't pick up my older boys chip.”source ↗
“kept stealing each others bikkies”source ↗
“When I had two cats it kept them from eating each other's food. And one was very food motivated.”source ↗