Husbandry Specialist Bites Off More Than She Can Chew With Spaz The Cat

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  • 01
    Font - AITA for telling my friend to deal with my cat?
  • 02
    Font - So I have two cats, Spaz (6M) and Clara (5F). Clara is a godsend, she's average weight, doesn't make a ton of noise, and REALLY loves people. Spaz (as the pound named him) REALLY loves people, is great about litter boxes but I swear to god the cat is forever hungry and overweight. Spaz has been on a
  • 03
    Font - him, he is 20lbs and somehow over those 3 years has not lost any weight. He eats the same amount of food as Clara who is 8lbs but runs around like a lunatic way more than she does. Even the vet is confused as to how this cat isn't losing weight (he's not diabetic we checked). He's only eating 8oz of cat food a day.
  • 04
    Font - Spaz is extremely food motivated. He will break into the Pantry to eat bread, wake us up at night by slamming into the door, and hunts for grasshoppers every day (even though there is snow outside). If you go near where the treats are held he will start begging
  • 05
    Font - incessantly. We have trained the cats to stop this behavior. We get up in the morning and if spaz or Clara begins to beg, we stop what we are doing, and put the cat food back. Essentially trained the cats that begging does not get you the food you want.
  • 06
    Font - My friend has fallen on hard times, and when she first came over, didn't understand why we weren't feeding our cats whenever they begged. She thought it was cruel of us to lord over food like that.
  • 07
    Font - She began to get up earlier than I was to feed the cats (6am) who then began getting extremely hungry before dinner (5pm) which she would feed as soon as they asked her. Now spaz has reverted to his destructive behavior and whenever he sees her will meow constantly without pause to be fed.
  • 08
    Font - He slams her door at 1am to 4am meowing and if she didn't lock the door, it causes the door to open because he can apparently do that now and he will literally jump all over her till she gets up to feed him (which he then herds her towards the food).
  • 09
    Font - After about 2 weeks of this. She told me that I had to do something about Spaz or she would take him back to the shelter. I told her that we had trained this out of him and since she didn't want to follow that training because 'it was cruel', she would have to deal with how spaz was acting.
  • 10
    Handwriting - Well she took this, packed her bags, and left to stay at another friend's house. She hasn't talked with me since. And now I'm thinking maybe I was the Ahole.
  • 11
    Font - Edited to add: she works with animals as an avian husbandry specialist. So I really wasn't sure if my training for the cats was cruel or not.
  • 12
    Font - Second edit: I don't think she meant the part about the shelter. Spaz is heavy and it really hurts when he jumps on you. And he's quite loud. I remember when we first started training him having many sleepless nights because of this. So I took this as her just being exasperated and trying to give an ultimatum. I do know her performance at work has not been so great since spaz had started his behavior.
  • 13
    Font - classicmotorist · 8 hr. ago Partassipant [1] ..she fell on hard times. You offered her a place. She gave her uninvited opinion on how you train your pets. She deliberately acted contrary to your choices and effectively untrained your pets - worse, trained them to believe they should always get their way. She then claims that your pets are a problem and that she, as a guest, will get rid of them if you cannot control them. And she gets offended and leaves when you say that isn't happening.
  • 14
    Font - Bromonium_ion OP · 8 hr. ago She is technically a husbandry specialist at our local aquarium. Granted her specialty is in birds, who usually require more strict training than cats. So I began to think maybe the routine I was doing was cruel and shouldn't be 'silencing' my cats as she put it. Basically she didn't like that I required them to be quiet as I fed them. And thought maybe it would be alright as long as I didn't focus on rewarding his more destructive behaviors like the jumping,

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