# Favorite "Forbidden" Treats?



## saitenyo (Nov 28, 2010)

What are your cats' favorite snacks that they're not really supposed to have? What lengths will they go to in order to secure one of these tasty treats?

Apollo's favorites are, amusingly enough, two of my own absolute favorite comfort snacks.

He loves Trader Joe's White Cheddar Corn Puffs. As soon as he smells them he's all over me, and will try to stick his head into the bag. I have to store them out of his reach or he'll chew the bag open. I can't really blame him, their texture is amazing.

His absolute favorite food though, is also my absolute favorite comfort food: instant mashed potatoes. I like to make them almost every morning for breakfast (it's a nice easy food on my half-awake stomach in the morning, with a decent balance of carbs/fat/protein for energy). 

It has gotten to the point where I have to shut him out of the room in order to eat my breakfast because he will do everything he possibly can to get at them. Even once I've finished them, he'll scramble to lick the bowl if it's left sitting or even a moment.

Athena doesn't really seem to like much people food. She's picky about treats in general. She does love to eat tissues though, and continues to baffle me in her attempts to eat them. I've tried putting them in cupboards, flipping the box upside down, plugging the opening with something...and she usually manages to get at them anyway. Now I have to keep them in closed drawers. And we replaced all of our trashcans with lidded ones so she can't get them out of the trash anymore.


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## cooncatbob (May 27, 2011)

Does Apollo like real mashed potatoes?


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## saitenyo (Nov 28, 2010)

cooncatbob said:


> Does Apollo like real mashed potatoes?


Not sure! I haven't made any in a long time. I would assume so though since they're practically the same thing (the instant ones are just dehydrated).

I suspect it's the milk and butter I add to them that he really likes.


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## cooncatbob (May 27, 2011)

Chiquita likes popcorn, she'll take 1 kernel at a time from the bowl and run off with it to scarf it down, probably likes the butter and the salt, the other thing she likes to do is drink from my glass of lo-fat milk.
Now I don't like instant mashed potatoes but I love real mashed and my brother is the opposite, he doesn't like real potato's because they have lumps.


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## ptomas (Aug 22, 2011)

my cats beg like crazy, but wont actually try to get the food, so dont really have any forbidden treats. 

for some reason they when I eat peaches in juice, the smell drives them wild and they will beg. I have never given them any due to sensitive stomachs. 

Lately when I am out of town, they have taken to chewing through bread bags to get bread or once even chewing through the dry food bag. The petsitter visits twice a day when I am away to make sure they have food and play with them. Guess it is due to boredem or anxiety since I am not there.


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## Hepburn (Feb 9, 2011)

The milk lef tover from cereal. I'm not sure if he would prefer it to plain ol' milk, because I never drink it, but he likes the sugary, grainy milk left in my cereal bowl.


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## Sinatra-Butters (Aug 9, 2010)

Nutmeg likes milk and Sinatra likes chips and crackers.


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## Cam (May 6, 2011)

Bertie likes a wide variety of odd foods, all of which we have discovered because he has stolen them (and none of which we intentionally feed him)...
He loves cheese, and if there is even a tiny morsel of grated cheese on the counter he will be up there. 
He also loves to lick the porridge from my bowl if I set it down when I'm finished. If I take it to the sink and fill it with water he won't want it though. 
He gets his head stuck in yogurt pots and will fish them out of the bin (it has a lid...)
But his absolute favourite forbidden people-food is custard! He goes crazy for it - it's the only thing that he will try and eat from our bowls as we are eating it, and if you fill the pan with water to soak he will be up on the counter drinking the custard-water! I have no idea why he likes custard so much, but it's about the only thing that he will go crazy to get at...


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## Abbie (Jan 13, 2011)

Evie steals any food she can get her paws on. We returned home the other day to find she had opened the cupboard, pulled out a bag of Haribo sweet, opened them and had a good chew. She spat the left over bits of sweet everywhere. 

Evie also LOVES fish food, she goes crazy whenever I try to feed our fish. She pops her head in the jar and can't get it out! She also loves vegetables, cauliflower being her current fave- stealing it from our plates or hamster food pile! She also opens my boxes of chocolates and eats them. She dragged them out from under the sofa last night. 

Now on to Mitzi. She's actually not too bad- though she will do anything for a malted milk or a butter biscuit. She stole one from my OH's mouth. She also has an addiction to whipped squirty cream, which is my fault. Eek, bad cat mummy. I had to stop buying it, we had a two month break. I thought this would be long enough for her to forget. Oh no, definitely not. As soon as she HEARD the sound of the can being shaken, she ran from the other end of the apartment to me and started meowing so loudly. She'll lick it straight from the top of my hot choc! Which is saying something, as she won't put her mouth near anything remotely warm any other time!


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## Nora B (Nov 6, 2010)

Our 2 cats are sneaky plate lickers. if one of my human boys leave a plate by the tv the kitties will check out what's available and taste a bit here and ther but hte big draw is cheese - not a surprise, and honey which kinda is.


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## kittywitty (Jun 19, 2010)

Oreo loves deli turkey meat. As soon as I take the package out of the fridge, she runs to me begging for a piece. Otherwise my cats are pretty good, they don't lick my dinner plate or steal my food (at least not anymore). Sometimes Oreo will jump up and sniff my dinner plate if she smells chicken but she always jumps down when I tell her to or push her away.


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## MowMow (Nov 6, 2010)

Well, MowMow gets lots of things he shouldn't but they aren't 'forbidden'. Cheetos, cheese, crackers, chips, cereal milk, taco bell, leftover subway.......

The only truly forbidden things are chicken and turkey since he's allergic. Unfortunately he LOVES both. I have to be really careful to put any leftovers down the disposal or walk bones right out to the trash outside because he'll manage to get them out of the regular trash can.


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## Salt and Peppy (Sep 17, 2011)

Charlie's favorite is yogurt. When she hears the top being pulled off, she comes running! We only give her a taste, on our finger, but she loves it! She also loves the SMELL of a banana, but she won't eat it. Weird.

Peppy's favorite is to eat the shredded cheese that I "accidently" drop on the floor while making pizzas. LOL


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## kittywitty (Jun 19, 2010)

How safe is it for cats to eat these forbidden treats? Even though some of you allow your cats to eat it, I'm concerned about the long term effects.


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## Goldtanker (Jan 9, 2011)

Midnight, the wild cat, gets deli beef in the morning and deli turkey at lunch, along with his dry food and his foraging with the foxes. His treat intake is over the top, BUT, he roams all night in the woods with the foxes, (we live out in the middle of nowhere) so he burns it off. Not an ounce of fat on that rascal. Different situation for cats that are inside.

BTW, I hate it when people spoil animals.


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## saitenyo (Nov 28, 2010)

kittywitty said:


> How safe is it for cats to eat these forbidden treats? Even though some of you allow your cats to eat it, I'm concerned about the long term effects.


It really depends on the food and what's in it. Things with salt, for example, aren't great for them to have a lot of (just like it's bad for us to eat too much salt) but aren't going to hurt if they have it now and then. Too much dairy can give some cats the runs so that depends on the cat. Things with refined sugars I personally wouldn't feed them intentionally since cats have a harder time dealing with refined sugar than we do but it's not going to hurt them if they manage to grab some on a rare occasion. Certain foods though, such as onions, garlic, avocado, chocolate (and others) can be dangerous because they are toxic to cats in certain quantities. 

So a good rule of thumb is to just familiarize yourself with what foods are actually toxic to cats (ASPCA has a list here: ASPCA | People Foods to Avoid Feeding Your Pets ) and try to learn how other foods can affect cats. That way you'll know when a cat stealing some people food is just a moment to roll your eyes and go, "Oh silly cat," or a moment worthy of a vet trip.

For example: Apollo's favorite "forbidden foods" contain corn, milk, butter, salt, and cheese. I wouldn't feed these things to him as part of a regular diet (milk and cheese give him the runs, salt isn't good in large amounts, corn can contribute to diabetes or digestive upset if fed as a large part of the diet) but it's not anything to worry about if he steals them now and then because they're not going to hurt him in those amounts. I personally try to avoid intentionally giving him these things though, just because that only encourages him to try to steal them more.

However Athena's favorite forbidden treat, tissues, is one I go to great lengths to avoid her getting, and I do get concerned every time she eats one, because they can potentially cause intestinal blockages. Thankfully so far she has always passed them, but I try not to take chances with those.

So just make sure you familiarize yourself with the effects of whatever forbidden your cat likes to try to steal and eat, and then you can know whether it's worth worrying about.


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## NRD (Mar 31, 2010)

Apollo and Evie must be related to my Hershey and Little Hersh, since my two Brown Brothers are interested in eating just about anything, as long as it's f-u-d. Especially if it's on my plate, whatever it is, but including deli turkey, tortilla chips, hamburger rolls (gee, that's my lunch today I'm describing), bagels, thin spaghetti with olive oil, olive oil in the bottle (they love to lick the outside of the bottle, and Hersh started knocking the tall bottles off the counter to see if the top would fall off, which it did once or twice, so now those bottles sit in a tall pot), ice cream, cheese--that's just off the top of my head. Two days ago, someone left the front hall door, where I keep the kitty treats on a high shelf, less than fully locked, and I was upstairs when I heard a crashing sound. Came downstairs to find the Brown Brothers, plus Blizzy, who goes crazy over Temptations as well as chips, helping themselves to a variety of treats someone (probably Hersh) had knocked off the high shelf, after opening the closet door.

Since the Brown Brothers like olive oil, when I finish a bowl with pasta, or pasta and spaghetti sauce, I run warm water in the bowl in the sink as I rinse the dishes, and both Brown Brothers love to lap up the water with those residual flavors, until after about a minute I say enough and clean the bowl. They get a lot of water that way, though.

Neither Blizzy nor Snowball, my two white cats, will touch my food as I eat it. They can even sit right next to it without interfering, unlike the Brown Brothers.


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## Abbie (Jan 13, 2011)

It sounds like all our cats have been to the same training school! Evie once ate some plastic, because it tasted like chicken. She's unstoppable.

Mitzi will sit by your plate and wait too. Much more polite.


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## tarah44 (Jul 18, 2011)

Brisket...Angel loves it. She will tear apart an unattended sandwich to get to the meat.


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## sjbredehoft (Sep 5, 2011)

Hmm, let's see, Dory loves any kind of meat and any kind of dairy product. She also loves bread. And she loves cat food. She's not a picky eater though and will beg for anything. I wouldn't say she has a favorite food, she even likes to chew on rice (but she spits the pieces out). I don't give her food but you have to keep your eyes on your food the whole time and she will lick the plates and steal food off of plates. So yeah, she has really bad table manners. Oh, also, she will try to pull your hand over to her when you're eating.


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## Cats&Plants (Aug 20, 2011)

Logan is all about Zesty Doritos. He will sit and stare at you until you share...which is let him lick the cheese off the chip. Mac is my fish kid. If I make fish for dinner, she will be right there trying to get some. I usually share, but she goes over the top lol.

They all get tuna now and then as a treat and they LOVE it!! Kisa and Jordan aren't beggars...they will however eat a dorito if you offer it to them lol


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## LeeLuMonster (Jan 9, 2011)

Activia for Leelu, the minute she hears me peeling the top off she's practically climbing my leg and "meaaa-ing". But ever the diva she'll feign indifference sit all pretty and with eyes half closed once I act like I notice she wants some.


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## Vivid Dawn (May 31, 2010)

When I had the money to regularly buy nutritional shakes (Ensure, Boost, etc.), Paizly liked those. When I was done, she'd lick the little bit in the rim of the top.
She also likes to lick the sauce from macaroni and cheese off the bowl when I'm done. Though I don't let her do it when I put mustard in it, as I'm not sure if mustard is safe for cats.


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