Can I show you my new cat and ask some advice?

[Goldenboysmum]

I adopted this gorgeous boy (Frankie) last week. He was found as a stray but has obviously had a home at some point. He moved in and made himself right at home, no shyness or fear at all.

Anyway, the only problem is he is constantly screaming for food, every time I leave the living room, he's right into the kitchen looking for food and is extremely vocal about it!

I'm assuming this is because when he was on the streets he didn't know when he'd be eating again. I'm decorating my bedroom so my bed is in the living room and last week I gave him biscuits and he picked the bowl up and hid under the bed to eat 🥺

Do you think he'll eventually realise he'll never go hungry again and settle down, any tips. My daughter distracted him tonight with a toy which seemed to work for a few minutes until he realised I'd left but she's not here all the time. Other than that he's great, friendly, playful, affectionate and just totally gorgeous ❤

Photo added as well

Look at his ‘I’m starving, why are you not feeding me’ face🤣 He’s gorgeous💙

I don’t have any advice for now but I took in a stray 16 years ago and she was the same, she used to run up to my plate, grab food & run off under the bed with it! She did this for a good while I remember. Totally fine & relaxed about food now though.

What a beautiful boy! He might grow out of it or he might not. My girl is 7 and still follows me to the kitchen. Every time I open the fridge she thinks she’s going to get a little bit of chicken. Shes very well fed, always has dry out and three meals a day, just a greedy girl! She’s also keen on pizza, don’t turn your back in our house!

@Goldenboysmum He is lovely
Breadcat was hungry when we got her and used to wolf everything down so fast she was sick.
She eventually settled down and became quite picky. Bookmark this for when the day comes that you have bought a 48 pouch multipack and he turns his nose up at it!

Beautiful boy 🥰🥰🥰

Our 2 rescue cats are both hungry boys. Had them 6 years now and Minx the black cat was 8 weeks old and Gizmo the ginger cat was 1 year old.

Minx stole a steak from my husband's plate. 🥰🥰😂😂

They do settle down once they have been here a while.

Forgot photo 🥰

My cat (now dead ☹️) was like this. Very greedy and would eat anything so we couldn’t leave any food out unattended (was particularly partial to lemon cake!). We had to feed our two cats in separate rooms with the door shut as she would push the other cat off her food - she’d just stand back and let her - then go back and finish her own food. She never changed in the 15 years we had her! It was no use putting biscuits down for her to graze during the day as she just wolfed them all down in one go, she was like a dog in that respect. We never had to throw any away though and she was never fussy!

He's very handsome!
Our cat is similar, we just feed him little and often if we're at home (dry is weighed and one tin a day). He was also (allegedly as not sure if he was just dumped at a vet) a stray.
I've volunteered for Cats Protection for years and do notice, generallly, the ex strays inhale their food as it's tough on the street so you need to be quick! Some are better after a few weeks once they realise food is provided twice a day and nobody else will eat it.

He might need worming.

I also adopted a Frankie 2 weeks ago , he’s also a hungry ( greedy ) boy who can’t get enough wet food and does enjoy his kibble too
He was also a stray that clearly had a home somewhere as he’s very loving gentle and house trained so I’m hoping he’ll settle down ( he might need to come Slimming world with me otherwise )

This.

He looks part oriental with his blue eyes and colouring, so will be more vocal than other cats.

My cat isn’t a rescue but is still obsessed with food. We have to be strict or else she’d eat constantly and we have to ignore her crying. We measure out her wet and dry food and she gobbles it-we couldn’t leave out biscuits as she’d gobble them. We do occasionally give snacks-the freeze dried chicken ones as they are just freeze dried meat. It’s very early days for him if you only adopted him a week ago-I would give him his wet food on a slow feeder and put dry food into a puzzler-where they have to swipe it and nudge it to get food out. As he gets used to regular food, and having a home, he may calm down. Our cat screeches-she has oriental in her-and we do have to be cruel and ignore her-she loves playing with a lace which distracts her a bit. As he gets used to having a loving home again, you can be a bit more relaxed about ignoring his crying.

What a gorgeous boy! Is he underweight, would you say? When I adopted my cat from a rescue place she was underweight and she would constantly pester for food and scavenge anything she could find! One night I left the remains of a dinner party on the kitchen worktop to sort out in the morning and overnight she ate a half a bowl of olives with whole garlic cloves and bits of chilli and drank all the olive oil, and ate half of a massive lasagne!!

it did get better as she put on weight though and learnt that she had a routine for her food. She’s still very food motivated but she doesn’t yell at me anymore!

Aww what a handsome boy!!! I’ve adopted many cats over the years and have often had this. I’ve always fed pouches twice a day, with extras (half a pouch, treats) when they were asking, if not making them put on weight and made sure there is plenty of biscuits down all day. I have found that, after a couple of months, the cats have settled down and realised food is always available and they stop constantly asking for more food. I have then been able to gradually reduce the extra food. Good luck!

Veterinary nurse here - have you taken him to the vets for a check over? There can be underlying reasons why cats are constantly asking for food, so might be a good idea to get this checked / ruled out, especially if he is a rescue and you aren’t sure of his background / age etc.

Otherwise ensuring he is on a good quality food to make him feel full, and not over feeding (hard when they are so vocal about it!) so that he doesn’t become overweight may help, but of course some of these cats that haven’t been used to getting food regularly can often want a lot of food when they find somewhere / someone to give it to them.

He’s a really gorgeous boy :)

I identify with this. My cat, also a stray is now 17. Got her at 18months and she was a fiend. Couldn’t leave food anywhere. She’d eat anything and everything including my child’s birthday cake, an Easter bunny (yes, I know chocolate is meant to be poisonous but she lived to tell the tale and eat a xmas santa. These were all packed by the way - she was a
demon for removing packaging’s. She once stalked me taking in a food shop; I was unpacking wondering what the crinkling was. Every time I turned around she would freeze and stop but I eventually caught her unpacking a bag! We couldn’t leave biscuits out, she would scoff the lot. She went onto specialist diet food as she was overweight but even that didn’t work as she was also an expert hunter. This went on for years, she has only just calmed down at 17. She no longer opens the bread bin to unwrap the bread and eat it.

He is stunning-and thank you for adopting him. He will probably always be very food-focussed due to his background, as you have correctly suggested.
BTW has he had a vet check? Is he wormed etc?
A slow feeding mat might help if his food focus is solely based on fear of going hungry again.
Stick with him-he will become even more beautiful as he settles in with you❤️

We took on two rescue girls from Greece. They were found as kittens but were strays for a while I guess.

When they first arrived they were food monsters. They ate fast and were constantly on the look put and would try to grab anything we were eating and steal food from the counter.

They are fed half a pouch each at 6am and a whole pouch at 5.30pm. They wolf it. They have a bowl of Hills Science dry every morning which is usually gone by tennish.

They have high quality food: Pets at Home good stuff, Lily's, etc, 60%ish meat or fish

They are better than they were initially and have largely stopped scavenging. They will have been with me for three years in February. They were 7 months when they arrived.

To begin with they had hard, rough fur and stank having lived on Whiskers at the Rescue. They now have plush, shiny soft fur and have settled down into total spoildom. One was very anxious and hid for two months - she's still anxious but loves a good stroke and head rub and warm lap now.

The only issue we have had is that one has lost all but four teeth and the other has lost about six. The vet thinks they must have had calici virus as kittens along with their terrible start on the streets in Greece.

Good luck - patience will reap rewards.

If he’s only been with you a week it’s very early days….hes probably chancing his luck.
feed at regular times and perhaps leave dried food down for him. But when he’s meowing for food - ignore him. Cats are very crafty and manipulative. Give him time to adjust but if you answer his every whim you’ll set yourself up for hard days slog.
hes a beautiful cat tho and thank you for adopting him. So many cats need loving homes

What a handsome chappy!

I adopted my cat almost exactly a year ago. She was a breeding cat in a professional breeders, the house had at least 12 cats of various ages in at any one time and they were fed altogether so it was always a frenzy.

My cat is CRAZY about getting her fill. I'm sorry to say it has only improved very very slightly and I think it'll just be how she always is.

I've got an automatic feeder and never give her food outside of this, but every time I go to the kitchen she begs, every time I eat a meal she tries to get some from me, sticking her paws in if I'm not fast enough to shoo her off (I'm veggie, it's never nice stuff for her!), every time I refill the feeder she jumps on the side multiple times to try and get at it while I'm doing it.

She gulps down food so fast I've ended up giving her 4 smaller meals a day as she would wolf it down then howl with indigestion for 5 minutes after. She licks the bowls so clean sometimes I doubt if I ever put food in.

She also ate a load of flapjack I covered in a tea towel to cool overnight.

But I love her so so much.

My last cat thought the only reason anyone went into the kitchen was to feed him and my god he would create merry hell if you dared to ignore him. We just had to ignore him, it took months but he finally shut up.

Sounds exactly like our cat! She would get in the shopping bags too. She was a menace! But we loved her dearly!

She got in my son’s car one day and pinched his sandwiches out of his packed lunch when he left the car door open to pop back in the house for something!

Thank you for all the advice and apologies for not coming back sooner. I'll try to answer some people .

He's been wormed, ans vaccinated at the home. I got him from the local dog and cat home. He was there for about 12 weeks before I got him and I've had him 1 week (today)

I don't think he's underweight, he's 6kg.

At the home he was getting whiskers 3 times a day plus dry food.

I've kept him the same so far, he gets wet food at 6am, 12pm and 6/7pm and dry food roughly around 9am and 3pm and again about 9pm so 6 small meals a day. I'm hoping that gradually he'll get a bit less or at least not wolf it like hes starving! I've also started shutting him on the living room when I'm getting something for myself, to hopefully stop him associating me being in the kitchen with food.

Thanks again and thank-you for the photos of your gorgeous cats, and yes Frankie is a Siamese cross

Oh bless his soul. I hope he calms down when he realises food is always coming, but I once lived with a cat who didn’t, and they’re wily. I was feeding him as my landlord (his owner) was away. He’d eat his breakfast then when I went to work go out the cat-flap and sit howling on the step like he’d been abandoned. Turned out he had THREE neighbours feeding him throughout, all thought they’d left him home alone or that I wasn’t feeding him! Same cat was known to eat bread (ripped out of the packet) and spaghetti bolognaise (left under clingfilm). All food had to be put in the oven or microwave, only way to stop him. He was gorgeous though.

I've always had cats (45 years), and my current one was a stray that we took in a year ago. He's always whining for more food. I bought some better-quality wet food - he won't eat it. He likes Sheba, but is scoffing 6 pouches a day! He was wormed a couple of weeks ago, so I'm thinking of taking him to the vet to have his thyroid checked (common in older cats). He had a cooked chicken breast 2 hours ago and is still mooching about, wanting more. Greedy sod.

He looks half Siamese (or Burmese as pp said) , these are very vocal and shouty cats ime. If he has been hungry for a while then the shoutyness will be a bit ramped up but calm down over time. He will always be more chatty and loud than a quieter breed though.