What to do with a clever cat

At the moment, there is a serious parent/child battle of wills going on in my household. It’s requiring some thought and cunning on my part to gain the upper hand, and most of the time, I’m losing.

I am also getting a lot of disdainful ‘Do you really think you’re smarter than I am?’ looks from my cat.

The problem is this – Jazz has decided that she prefers dog biscuits to cat biscuits. For ages I kept finding these little piles of bicky ‘sawdust’ in the dogs bowls, and couldn’t work it out …until one day I caught the little villain. It really did look very funny, and extremely cute, with this little cat munching out of the dogs' bowls, crunching up biscuits she couldn't even fit into her mouth …but now she won’t eat her cat biscuits for love nor money.

I phoned Jansens to see whether the whole dog vs cat biscuit thing would be that much of a problem (thinking I could maybe just leave the cat to eat dog biscuits until she got bored, and put herself back onto cat biscuits ...presuming of course that she would get bored), and apparently it is. Crap. Once the guy on the other end of the phone had actually processed that my cat will only eat dog biscuits (she's not just getting on the dog biscuits every now and again for a laugh, or to torment the puppies), he told me that dog biscuits lack an ingredient (Thiamine? Something starting with ‘T’ anyway) that cat biscuits have, and that cats need, to help the kitties break them down.

Of course, this wouldn’t be an issue if the dogs would just guts their biscuits like most normal dogs … (We’re establishing a bit of a theme here aren’t we? But I swear the animals were all unbalanced when we got them!!) ...or if they wouldn't just sit there politely watching the cat and waiting for her to finish before taking their biscuits back over for themselves!

So, I launched my attack.

Firstly, I changed her food to Iams - the same brand and flavour as the dog biscuits as I thought they might taste pretty much the same. That worked well ...for a few days.

I then tried mixing her bickies with wet food …and she just looked at me as if to say "I am not stupid. Get these damn biscuits out of my wet food".

I tried putting cat biscuits in the dogs bowls, which she did fall for. Once.

I then I thought I’d struck gold. I sprinkled a few Whiskas bickies over the top of her Iams (She looooves Whiskas, but she’s not allowed them because they make her throw up), and she made seriously short work of her bickies for about 2 weeks. But then, when we arrived home on Sunday, we found that all the Whiskas bickies had been carefully picked off the top of her bowl, and the bicky sawdust was back in the dogs bowls (I’d forgotten to empty what was left in the bowls before we went away on Saturday morning).

So, I've realised that I really need to start at the source of the problem. How does one teach one's cat, that she is a cat not a dog ...?

Still, I suppose they did tell me at the pet store* when I got her that she had heaps of personality. I can't say I wasn't warned ...

* Yes, all 3 of our animals are pet store babies. Although you probably think we should have gotten animals from the SPCA, each of Jazz, Jack and Jess have been ‘rescued’ in their own right.

Jazz – Jazzy was 5 months old when we got her. The pet store we got her from was affiliated with ‘The Lonely Meow’ and Jazz was part of a rescue. She was too big for many people to want as a kitten (being close to her full size), and so had sat around in the pet store without too many prospects, until I brought her home. She more than likely would have been put down had we not been able to give her a home.

Jess – Jess was an older baby as well, so had gotten too big at the pet store for many people to be interested in her as a pup. For whatever reason, when the rest of the litter she came into the pet store with found homes, she didn’t, and she’d outlasted two further litters of puppies as well, all without finding a home. Also, by the time we got her, she’d been in the pet store too long, and had developed some seriously bad habits (especially nipping and biting - this was from being in a cage, and jumping up to get people's attention, and to get to hands that were dangled over the side of the pen for some lovin').

Jack – We came across in a pet store down the line and he was the tiniest little pup you’ve ever seen (taken away from his mum too early). He couldn’t walk, and couldn’t even lap properly …and he was in a cage by himself at the back of a dirty, smelly, pet store with no food or water, and the cage lining was covered in wee and diarrhea. It turned out once we had him home, and took him to the vet, he was also very sick with a nasty parasite in his gut. Those people had been shut down twice by the SPCA, and have since been shut down again, hopefully permanently!