My cat has gone mental! 29 September 2011 at 1:39PM in Pets & pet care 5 replies 909 views

beckle_82

Hi everyone,

I am relatively certain this is normal but just wanted to check - I have a five year old cat who is well behaved, loving and affectionate and who we spoil like mad. I know it's a bad habit but we give her scraps from dinner and she always waits patiently until the end of the meal to lick whatever is on the plate.
Recently we got some BBQ chicken fillets (the ready cooked ones for sandwiches/ salads) and gave her the dreggy tiny bits in the packet at the end.
Since then she has been going crazy. She runs around when we open the fridge, stretches herself up the cabinets so we know she is there, yowls (which is really unusual) and has developed a taste for all sorts of food which she would never have gone near before. She has licking the chilli con carne off the plate, mashed potato, pasta, spag bol, bread, and even chicken tikka masala.
Is this normal? Are their certain ingredients cats go bonkers for?
Obviously we aren't giving her massive amounts of these things, just the scrapings of sauce that is left over on the plate.
My other cats turn their noses up at all of these things.

ankspon

Remind me to bring my own plates for dinner

kazwookie

I'd stop feeding the cat direct off the dinner plates, put anything you want the cat to have direct in the feeding bowl.

Fridaycat

I personally wouldn't feed my 5 cats any scraps, no matter how small. Certain foods of ours are poisonous to cats, for example chocolate, onions, garlic... these could be present in many human food scraps.

Not only that, but feeding scraps can also encourage obesity, a growing issue amongst our feline (and canine) population, so I would suggest that you stick to a good quality cat food and scrap the scraps.

rising_from_the_ashes

I'd stop letting her have the plates too - as Friday says, some foods are poisonous, and although you may be able to stop her eating anything like that in your house, I'd be a bit worried in case she was out and about, sneaked into someone's house and licked something up that she shouldn't.

My wee cat would always lick plates given the opportunity (have known a paw to suddenly appear to swipe a bit of chicken off my plate) but she is always told "no" firmly and now reluctantly sits and watches instead - although she does still try it on with visitors!

Kaz2904

My little kitty is a naughty one too! She would never get up on the side or try to eat anyone's food. We could have a takeaway without worrying about having stuff spread out. Until we got a pepperoni pizza with chillis on it one day. She came running in, stole a chilli off the pizza and ate it in one go. Now she goes mad for spicy things. Weird isn't it? She also likes peanuts (especially chilli coated ones).
We now make sure that she doesn't get to stuff. Strangely, she will not eat from our plates. She'll hook it off with her paw and eat it from the floor.