My cats are uninterested in human food – though they enjoy sniffing at food, they don’t steal anything. Heck, they won’t even eat treats unless the treat is placed IN their dish.
Back in high school, when I owned my own horse, a friend I rode with and I would sometimes call the one pizza place that would deliver to the barn. One day, we had a small pepperoni pizza delivered, and placed it on a picnic table about 5’ away from where we had our horses tied, when the barn phone rang. We both went inside to answer it, and when we came back a couple of minutes later, my friend’s horse had managed to reach over the tie post to the table, knock the pizza box to the ground, and eat the entire pizza. My horse continued to stand there with a “don’t look at ME, HE did that” look.
We called the vet and after he quit laughing, he told us just to watch the horse for “signs of distress”, but none were forthcoming. From the horse, at any rate. WE were annoyed.
I knew quite a few horses that loved red and white peppermints. My trainer’s horse once ripped the pocket off her coat to get at the candy inside.
When I was a wee kid we lived in a rural town and the family pet was an obscenely obese golden labrador named Bimbo. One of Bimbo’s favourite pastimes was to break-out of the backyard and trot/waddle the 3km from our house to the local butchershop, where he would park his more-than-ample-labrador-arse outside the door and HOWL (like only a starving labrador can) until Harry Gogol (the butcher) would chuck him a marrowbone to shut him up and send him away. It seemed that Bimbo was bad for business, with customers deferring their meaty purchases until they saw him jubilantly on his way home, bone-in-mouth, and a shit-faced labrador-grin from ear to ear.
One day Bimbo did his usual Houdini routine, but on arrival at Gogol’s, saw one of the local matrons putting her weekly shop in the back of her car. Bimbo wasn’t as dumb as he looked apparently, because when she went back to get her second load from Harry’s, Bimbo went in for the kill and stole a leg of lamb from the unsecured boot. :eek:
Unfortunately the lady spied the thief, and given it was a very small town in those days, quickly found my mum to demand restitution and damages. Now, my mum was bringing up us three kids on her own, working two jobs and doing it tough, but she did repay the lady for Bimbo’s lack of moral and ethical practices…to the tune of then a full day’s pay!
Getting home, ready to beat the brains out of her brainless dog, she found that Bimbo was just starting-in on the leg of lamb…so she rescued it, cut away the couple of bits that had already been slavvered over by the drooling mutt, and bunged the rest in the oven. We ate roast lamb, lamb sandwiches, lamb refried, and shepherd’s pie for the next week.
Bimbo got nothing, and the next day was back at Harry’s begging for more.
My dad had a dog who had some really epic tales of food theft. They lived in a small town in Northern Vermont and the dog wandered free all over town. One time he went over to the school and stole a kid’s lunch. My dad didn’t do the obvious, which was to come over and give the kid lunch money. Oh, no. He brought the kid a baloney sandwich with, as my sister described it, a thumb print in it. The dog also went to “Old Home Day” and had two pies and a ham. I’m not sure what kind of pie. Then my father got married and, the first year, the dog ate half the Thanksgiving turkey which was being stored on the porch. Amazingly, that marriage lasted. Dad is a minister and had a couple over for prenuptial counseling. The dog inhaled a donut out of the bride’s hand.
My own angel Robert loves to stare at my son when he eats on the couch, but I’m pretty sure he’s just guarding the food.
Our current dogs, Simone and Sadie, have never stolen any food, they don’t even surf up onto the coffee table. But Simone the pit bull looks tempted when I’m having Kung Pao (she’s a peanut and peanut butter addict).
Our birds are another story. Especially Scritch the budgie. She’ll come whirring down and plop straight into my plate or bowl of food if I come into her room with anything edible. She has no scruples about stomping through spaghetti. It’s a bird thing; whatever the flock is eating is fair game.
Long ago we had a bassett/beagle mix, Arnold, who stole food from around the neighborhood. This was decades ago in the country and we didn’t keep him confined, he just ran around…I’d never do that now. His greatest achievement was bringing home an entire turkey, cooked, with a carving knife in it. We never found out whose it was. We kept the knife in our kitchen for years.
The strangest was a cat I had when I was a preteenager. Tigger could open doors by turning the knob; he’d stand up on tiptoe and hook both paws over the knob, step out to the side, and lift up his legs and swing, turning the knob.
One day he opened the oven while my Mom was baking a whole chicken. Somehow he got the chicken and its platter out onto the floor without spilling it, without getting trapped by the swinging oven door, and without getting burned, and pulled a leg off the chicken. He left the leg neatly in his own food bowl and did no further damage to the chicken.
We have no idea how he did it – didn’t see it happen – but he and his much slower, less ambitious sister were the only living things in the house when that happened.
My cat, Rasputin, has an odd love of carbs. So, if I leave any bread on the counter I wind up finding a plastic bag gnawed through and crumbs everywhere in another end of my apartment. Nothing is funnier than watching a cat carrying a loaf of bread into another room like its a dead mouse.
We have a very low large table near our sofas that our dog, Piper, can rest her front paws on if she wants to–and if there’s any food remotely near the edge of the table, it’s gone. Instantly. If there are Golden Retrievers, Piper’s a Westie Vacuum Cleaner.
Grover the cat once jumped up and stole a single meatball from a hot meatball sandwich from subway. He was just big enough to get the entire thing in his mouth, but the meatball was just a bit too large to chew or spit out past his fangs.
So he sat there, sorta growling, while I reached down and broke it up so he could eat it.
Oh, this was while my six buddies and I were playing D&D, all sitting around my mom’s kitchen table. Laughing our asses off. Absolutely no attempt at stealth, but Grover wasn’t much for stealth. Large, solidly muscled clumsy affectionate monster. I miss him.
side Grover story-I once watched him walk across my kitchen on his hind legs, while carrying a ball in his front paws. He reached the far side, turned, saw me, and I imagined an interior monologue like “Oops, they’re not supposed to see us displaying our true abilities! Quickly, assume deceptive status before we’re discovered!”
He dropped to all fours, batted the ball for a couple of seconds, then walked out of the room. But he paused and looked back as if checking for suspicions of discovery.
I’m dog sitting for a friend and if I leave my apartment for 5 mins, the dog will eat my cats food. Even if she has food of her own, and she’ll always bring the bowl into the living room, just to prove she ate the food, and not the cat. She’s not too bright.
My cat Fezzik just loves smoked deli turkey. If I’m eating it, he’ll jump right up and demand a piece. If I don’t give him one, he’ll attack my sandwich the instant I put it down. Again, no attempt at stealth, but that’s cause Fez is the most brazen creature to ever walk amongst us.
He also demands I save just a little milk in to bowl for him when I’m eating cereal, but he’ll actually wait until I’m finished.
My cat Spooky does this with the bread too. I don’t think he means to share with the dog, but that’s how it ends up when Rosie hears the bread hit the floor.
I don’t remember which pet it was but years ago I gave one left-over stew in their bowl and when they walked away there was a little pile of cleaned -off peas left. That’s some serious eating skills and attention to detail, I was very impressed.
And, yeah, the microwave is also my tactic for keeping food from the critters. I don’t let them up on the counters but they go for it when I’m not looking.
I fostered a dobie who would not take anything out of your hand or any food that wasn’t given specifically to her. Even treats you had to put on the floor or in her dish for her to eat it. She was also one of the few foster dogs I had that didn’t try and eat the cat food.
She was an amazingly well-behaved dog, her owner died and no one in the family could take her. She was one of the hardest fosters to part with, she was a great dog that had an unfortunate situation.
The current one is a counter surfer. All items must be placed far back from her reach if you are not in the room. She attempted a burrito snatching this weekend, but I blame that on our house guest who left it on the coffee table while refilling a drink.
My dogs are pretty well behaved now. I can leave a plate within reach, and go in the kitchen (out of sight) and it will be safe.
Lucy is a sneaky little dog food thief, though. I also have a Bichon, Ernie, and an old Sheltie, Blaze. Ernie has learned to guard his wet food from Lucy, but sometimes Blaze doesn’t eat his wet food right away. Lucy will circle all the way around to the back hall, and come in another door to get at Blaze’s food. I have to watch her like a hawk! She also cleans all the dogs’ bowls for them when they’re done. She’s helpful like that. :rolleyes: She even eats all of Ernie’s dry food when she has her own dry food.
In short, she’s a pig and will eat everything, all the time. But she’s sooo cute with those puppy dog eyes, and you know she’s just staaaaarviiiinnng.
Another Gordon Setter, my sweet Corey, who lived to be 14 and a half, which is a ripe old age for a large breed. He loved raw potatioes… If I was peeling potaties, he would sit and whimper until I gave him a piece.
One day, my mother called me into the living room. “Did you give him a whole potato?” she asked. Corey was laying on the sofa, happily munching on a potato. He looked up and me and smiled, wagging his tail.
“No, I didn’t give him a potato. Wonder where he got it?”
Several days later this was repeated. And again. Finally, one day I saw Corey heading for the kitchen with purpose. I snuck to the door to watch.
We had open shelves under the counter, with a curtain hanging there to hide the stuff. This is where the bagged potatoes were stored. Corey puched the curtain aside, reached in, and helped himself to a potato. Just one… he wasn’t greedy. The turned around, saw me, wagged his tail - ‘Oh, hi mom, just getting a snack!’- and went back to the couch.
We eventually moved the potatoes to an enclosed cabinet, but every so often I would put one back on the open shelf for him to ‘find’.
Susie the bull terrier is a shameless thief. Longer in the back than other ones we have had, she can reach the work surfaces and pull stuff down. Yesterday she ate a banana which was in a bowl on the trolley, having worked out that the unappetising exterior contained sweet stuff inside. She regularly puts her paws up on a chair to check the emptied breakfast table if she thinks no one’s looking.
More than forty years ago Dinah stole the week’s meat which the butcher had delivered (in the days when butchers still delivered) and left on the draining board.
Just last night we forgot to move the pasta pot from the front of the stove (where Zoe can reach it) to the back. I can just see the stove from the couch (we don’t have a table at the moment), and a few minutes after we started eating I spotted her with her paws up on the stove and her nose in the pot. So much for leftovers for lunch today.
A few months ago we were cleaning out the fridge and found a tupperware bowl with some very green and fuzzy red beans and rice in the back. Lord knows how long it had been there. Several hours after we had dumped it in the garbage, Zoe puked green and fuzzy red beans and rice all over the floor. We were sure she’d get food poisoning, but after puking everything up she was fine.
Oh! Thanks for reminding me, Arglefraster. Lilith the Doberman nailed us again last night to the tune of three raw biscuits. I put the dough out on the pan, pushed it to the back of the counter, and left the room. I have no excuse except that she’s done so well for so long she’s lulled me into a false sense of security.
A few weeks ago I was going to make tuna salad to take to work for lunch. I opened the pack of tuna and dumped it in the bowl then turned to the cupboard to grab spices so the tuna would actually be edible.
When I turned around, Zaney, our benevolent feline empress, had her face buried in the bowl and was chowing away furiously. The look I got when I shooed her off the counter (and then bagged the tuna to use for low volume treats over the next few days since I wouldn’t be eating it now) would have killed a smaller man.
My favorite story of animal food theft was about a month after I got Bitz the Wondermutt. She was three years old and I hadn’t poison trained her yet. I was enjoying quite possibly the best sandwich of my life. Deli bologna, roast beef, tomato and lettuce on sourdough with homemade horseradish sauce. Seriously, even as I was eating it I was thinking, “This is the best sandwich in the history of humanity.”
I was down to the last inch/inch and a half when my wife called me back to the bedroom to take a look at something. When I got back to the living room a minute or so later, the plate was empty. Smack dab in the middle of the coffee table and empty as the taxman’s heart.
Bitz was licking her maw and giving me the happiest look. I was dumbstruck. “Um, uh, my sandwich. You, you, you ate my sandwich. You ATE it. My sandwich.” The whole time she was looking at me like, “Man, the grub’s great here. Thanks for taking me in, dude.”
She was too cute to be mad at, but I still, seven years later, regret the loss of that sandwich. I still have the mutt, though, so at least I think my priorities are in line.
Both my dogs (a black Lab and a poodle) are habitual trashcan scroungers. They wait until the middle of the night, then strike when everyone is sleeping. Of course, they can’t clean up their mess very well, so we always find out. Nothing like a phone book on the trashcan lid to keep 'em out.
My father, mistakenly believing that my Lab devoured a Christmas turkey, took the newspaper to her heiny for a good five minutes. Later my mom informed him that she had moved it outside to another room. He rarely jumps to conclusions anymore.
Yeah, our shepherd mix recently ate an unopened can of cat food. Chewed right into it, licked the food out, and left fragments of mangled aluminum all over the room.
This same dog has stolen two chocolate cakes (on two different occasions – yeah, we’re slow learners about putting stuff away), a large jar of peanut butter, and just about everything else you can imagine the moment you turn your back. Pretty much the only food she doesn’t steal is fruit. The fruit basket has sat out on the counter unmolested for years.
She’s extremely delicate about it, though. She has never broken a dish. She even managed to carry a sugar bowl, with lid, up a flight of stairs, to lick it out in the family room.
I think she is converting the other two dogs to her nefarious ways. They aren’t as tall, so they have less opportunity – but I’ve caught one trying to swipe a piece of pizza recently.
Heh, this reminds me of other stories of my dearly departed canine companion (ddcc?), who discovered that the dried syrup in soda cans and bottles was quite tasty. When she was very young, she would be confined to the back yard when we were not home. This was also where we kept the recycling containers. Being that there were six (and sometimes more) college students living in the home, there was quite the quantity of “empty” soda bottles and cans. Indy learned that she could sneak cans out of the bin to a quiet corner, chew them open, then lick out all of the tasty dried syrup. But that wasn’t enough for her. She also learned that if she picked up a coke bottle by the open end then tossed it up over the brick patio sometimes it would land and break open, providing access to even more syrup. Her method was discovered by a housemate that had stayed home sick one day.
Of course, once we realized what she was doing we stopped her, but it was amazing to find out she had figured out how to break open the bottles.
