So Millie (2yoF left) is free fed and has been her whole life. We have been looking after her for over a month now and she will likely be here for awhile. Then there’s Gizmo (11moM right). He’s fed at certain times of the day and in short, is a greedy >!bastard!<. Also they are both indoor cats so simply kicking one outside wont help.

Before Millie was here, he was completely fine with set schedules for food, ate at a normal pace and he is at a healthy weight (haven’t weighed him for a little bit but last time we checked he’s healthy) but since Millie came, he has been trying really hard to rob as much of her food as he can (which I know is just what cats do, they pinch each other’s food) but he has gotten to the point where he will put as much as he can physically carry and will eat it really fast, but if we are trying to get him to stop, he will just swallow it instead.

Just today we gave them a sausage each as a little treat (cut up of course) and we forgot to cover hers up, because she eats when she feels like it, so I went into the living room from the kitchen and I see him in the middle of the floor sounding like he has asthma because he ate all of her sausage as if it was one full cut while we wernet in the room. He was breathing but with great effort and he was somehow still ready to run when I walked in. I got to him and picked him up to see if I could maybe help him but it went down properly right after that for some reason, but at least he didnt completely choke on it but still, we dont want him choking on food because he feels the need to eat as much as he can as fast as he can (because we usually try to keep him away from Millies food). (Our dog has also taken some but is not nearly as interested as Gizmo)

The only thing that currently works is to cover it up with a big dish and put a heavy box (about the same size as the cat) on top of it and that stops Gizmo and our dog but its remembering to cover it and Millie needing to sit on top of the box to tell us she wants access to her food. We also cant just put her food in a different room because people (who live with me) like to leave our doors open and are the kind who wont close the door just because we asked.

A friend suggested getting a squirt gun to use whenever he goes to the food but im hearing a lot of mixed opinions and results with doing that. Ive also heard of people using slow feeders for their fast eating cats but im not sure which ones would work since we had another dog who ate really fast and a slow feeder didnt slow him down much, but thankfully he didnt really choke on his food like Gizmo does.

Not really sure what will help or what will work with him especially since every cat is different. Thanks for reading this there’s a lot lol and thanks for any advice in advance :>