Sammy's demands

So way back when we moved into the apartment we were feeding the cats when we woke up and then when we got home from work....wellllll apparently when we were waking up was not good enough for Sammy. He decided to try to find ways to wake us up sooner so he could eat sooner. First he started by knocking the frame off my nightstand to try and wake us up...after that it became the frame and my alarm clock...and after that it became my frame, the alarm clock and then my lamp. Once everything was removed off my nightstand he decided that should be where he sleeps...so instead of having to wake up to the sound of crashing we just gave up and put Sammy's bed on my nightstand. But that was not the end of it...we would get up and give them their food and then try to go back to sleep...this got old real soon...especially when Sammy decided to start chewing on Dave's lamp shade and then putting the lamp into the bed.

So we got automatic feeders for the cats...not the kind that are just a container full of food...no that would be too much for Sammy to handle...no we got the ones with timers so you can set them to feed your cats when you want them to. We set the morning feeding for before we woke up and the dinner feeding for the evening. Yes well this did not work for Sammy either. he learned how to disassemble the automatic feeder...yes that's right, he figured out how to pry it all apart to get himself food whenever he pleased...and he didn't just figure out how to diassemble it, but he learned how it worked. He learned that there were wheels up inside it that turned to release the food...so he learned that he could lay down, reach up into the feeder and turn the wheels himself to eat whenever he pleased.

So after months of this and taping the feeders together and down to the mat we figured out how to be smarter than the kitty. We finally realized we could cover and wrap the feeders up in pillowcases...worked for awhile until he found a way to get under the pillowcase and get food.

We of course got to explain all of this to our vet upon taking Sammy in for his yearly check up. Sammy shocked the vet by managing to do what "no cat has managed to accomplish before" by more than doubling his weight in 10 months...he went from 8 pounds to about 17 pounds. Happily though we have since figured out the feeding situation and taken Sammy to the vet again. Sammy has lost a few pounds, but it looks like a lot more than that because now that he doesn't spend all of his time stealing food he is actually playing and running around again.