There’s this big, sturdy yellow tomcat that hangs around outside my door. He’s is super friendly and would come inside if I would let him. I thought he was lost at first because he kept meowing at me, and when I gave him a saucer of milk he seemed famished, though he wasn’t thin. He’s got a collar and an ID tag. I called the owner off the ID tag’s telephone number and he told me the cat roams the neighborhood and is best pals with whoever will feed him.
Anyway … now the cat comes rushing up to me every time I leave the house or go in the house. I only feed him occasionally because I don’t want him to get the notion that I’m his regular meal and possibly overfeed him (he’s not fat) but this only seems to have made his determination to get fed stronger.
Why does this cat act so damn hungry all the time? He’s certainly not thin. I think I’m being played by him.
Sounds like the owner is right. He’s sourcing food. If you stop feeding him he’ll likely move on. Knowing cats, he probably has a few different sources in line.
Intermittent reinforcement is as strong as if not stronger than continuous reinforcement. You’re intermittently reinforcing the cat’s behaviour by feeding him on an irregular schedule. If you want to extinguish the behaviour don’t feed the cat at all. You shouldn’t really be feeding someone else’s pet anyway, and the cat’s owner is being irresponsible in allowing the cat to roam around. I hope the cat is at least neutered.
My friend, you are being played like a piano in a concert hall! My family has had several cats over the years, most of whom have had alternate residences. The most charming of them had her own chair in our next-door neighbor’s house, even though one of them was allergic to cats, and they didn’t even feed her!
As for why the cat’s acting hungry, it’s because it’s working. Look, I once house-sat for friends who owned a 20 lb Burmese. The very first day, he had me convinced he was fed during meals. He didn’t succeed in getting me to feed him and, when they came back, my friends assured me he wasn’t; he was just a very convincing actor.
How can you get him to stop? I’ve got no idea. It could be he’s taken a liking to you. I would recommend you stop feeding him. Trust me, a charmer like that’s not going to starve to death, nor will he perish for lack of attention. As for paying attention to him, that’s up to you. It depends on how much you like him and where you live. If there’s a busy street between you and his people, stop.
I have been played by our cat for SEVENTEEN years now. And as I write, she is loudly complaining that she hasn’t been fed enough this morning, and that she intends to wake the rest of the house if something isn’t done very, very quickly. I’ like to tell her that I don’t negotiate with terrorists, but she knows that isn’t true.
We had a big ol’ Tom hanging around in the shadows for years. And when I say “big”, I mean 24 lbs. My husband and I pulled in one day and saw my son putting a dish of food down for him. “D’oh!”
He’s all ours now. We adore him. Every fat-filled, giant-pawed ounce of him. And yes, we were played.
Yes, you are being played. Cats will gleefully take advantage of human sympathy at every opportunity. The first cat my husband and I had was a scrawny, half-grown kitten we rescued from a dumpster at our apartment complex. We were letting him out, since it was a large complex with no dogs and we were well away from the road, and he was fixed. Then one day he meowed to be let in and he was wearing somebody else’s collar! A little investigation revealed that ‘our’ cat had at least three different ‘owners’ in the building; if no one answered him at one door, he would just go to the next and ask to be let in there!
Cats are experts at playing people, especially when it comes to food. This past summer,this monster succeeded in convincing a guy a couple of blocks away that he was homeless and needed food. My mother only managed to get a collar and tag on him a few days before the guy was going to move away and send the cat to the SPCA!
That’s my cat exactly. I’m certain he’s not my cat, even though he’s “lived” with me for three years. He has no collar though. I keep meaning to put one on him with a note attached. Call me if this is your cat, or you think it’s your cat. We need to talk. There was this nice military guy living next door for about a year and “my” cat was pretty upset when he moved away recently. I know for a fact he was hitting him up on a daily basis. He also has a house somewhere from which he comes home smelling like perfume. Hello, you think I can’t smell that? Bitch.
This is simplified, but here’s an explanation (with diagrams!)* from stuff I recently learned in intro Psych.
You have used conditioning to teach the cat to go all atwitter when he sees you. In his mind, there is a direct connection between event “appearance of astro” and event “get tasty food”.
What you want to do is called “extinction” and it’s basically the process of making the cat un-learn this, or un-condition himself.
If you feed him occasionally, he’ll gradually un-learn the behavior during the times when you don’t feed him, but when you do feed him he’ll go “Aha! It’s true! Seeing astro DOES mean I get tasty food!” and you’re right back where you started. See Diagram 1.
If you stop feeding him completely, he’ll show some spikes of longing excitement but he’ll eventually get over it. See Diagram 2.
Again, this is overly simplified, and YMMV, but there’s my slightly informed two cents.
I put “Operant Conditioning” on the diagrams but now I realize that since I’m describing an emotional reaction, classical conditioning may be more apt. However, I can’t be arsed to change the diagrams now.
Yeah, though that’s a pretty common reaction to that photo. He’s actually a giant puff ball, unless you’re small and furry, or, of course, a peacock feather. Come to think of it, given your user name, I don’t think he’s ever caught a mole, but you might not want to get too close anyway.
