I have three cats. One is your typical domesticated house cat - her name is Pepper. The other two are semi-feral cats that I took to feeding at a place I lived many years ago. When it was time for me to move, I trapped them and brought them indoors. (It was that or leave them to their fate - which to me, felt like abandonment.) So they live inside with us and pretty much mind their own business. I am not good at enforcing rules. The cats pretty much go wherever they please. I do try to wave them out of the way if I am cooking or working on the computer...
The semi-feral ones are buddies. Pepper doesn't have a feline buddy (her buddy died about two years ago). I also have two dogs; they also go pretty much wherever they please. As a result, the cats are fed at elevated locales. The semi-ferals eat together on top of a chest of drawers near the back door. Pepper typically eats on top of the refrigerator. Over the past few days, I noticed Pepper was failing to clean her bowl by the next feeding time. As you may imagine, I started to become quite anxious about why she wasn't eating. She certainly seemed fine otherwise. I contemplated whether to take her in for bloodwork - this would be a big ordeal, as she hates car rides and vomits both on the trip in and on the way home. Should I try to have someone come out to the house instead? In the meantime, I contemplated buying a different kind of food, and started cleaning her bowl a bit more rigorously. She always seemed eager to eat when I first put out the food, but just wasn't finishing like normal. I also moved her food bowl to a table. (I was suspicious there may have been cat-cat or cat-dog scuffles near the refrigerator.) The good news is she eating great with the change in locale! The bad news is she vomited a gi-normous hairball this morning, then proceeded to have diarrhea all over the house. Fun for me. Hopefully now that all systems have had a clearing she will go back to normal and I can quit worrying!
Sigh.
Pepper
Max
