Hello All, Been awhile since i've been on here, So quick back store, Have a year/half, F1 Male, over the past week we have started to note some food aggression with him as soon as we pull his food out to feed him he's challenging us, and has even bit my wife once, he's on a raw diet, Chicken wing twice a day but we always leave a small bowl of dry food out as well. He is very much an F1, Loves us to death, but won't allow us to pet him at all,, But follows us around everywhere, and gives good body bumps every time we come home, He has plenty of play time, and has full time access to his out door run to work out extra frustrations, ( has been a life saver ) We want to nip this in the butt, but am a little unsure how, he's an only cat,,, and a spoiled one at that.

Any advice?

Thanks

can you explain exactly your routine for feeding him? What you do - step by step and what he does that is causing you concern? When you say he is challenging you, what does he do? As much detail as possible would help any ideas we have to avoid this behaviour from him.

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Melissa

UK
Oscar - Rescue (Rascal!!!) Bengal

I will use this mornings breakfast as an example.

My alarm goes off. 30 seconds later Babou is in our bedroom "yelling" at me in his feed me voice. I throw on socks and grab a string toy to distract him as I walk or he swats at my feet and yells at me while I try to get down stairs. Today as I tried to go down stairs he bit my foot, I got him down stairs closed him in his room till I had his breakfast ready. So a min later then fed him.

Basically if he's hungery from the time I open the fridge to pull out his chicken to the time I place it in his feeding area he's a crazy kitty trying to bite and scratch us.

Once he was done eating came walks out cute as can be and calm

When you walk downstairs do you think he is just over excited about being fed and his hunting prey instinct makes him hunt your feet or is he cross and aggressive? If it's just over excitement then it sounds like you are doing the right thing with distracting him with the string toy but maybe some thick, bite proof slippers would be a good idea too! Could you have a handful of toys in a basket at the top of the stairs so you could throw a toy for him to chase down the stairs? When you get to the kitchen, can you shut him in a side room so you can prepare his breakfast in peace, put it on the floor and then let him in? It sounds like he just gets beside himself when you are preparing the food and in his excitement he bites and scratches. Even if it is just excitement, with an F1 I am sure it really hurts as they are no soft little lap cats.

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Melissa

UK
Oscar - Rescue (Rascal!!!) Bengal

Has his food "routine' changed at all? It seems my cat enjoys eating more in the winter time during cooler weather than in the summer. Sounds to me as if he is "starving" and anxious to eat. Are you sure he's eating enough? Is his kibble gone in the morning or do you not leave it out overnight? Sounds to me like he needs more to eat. And I'd feed him before you go to bed as well. Some cats do well with two meals a day, others need more. Mine grazes and eats throughout the day, but he is an F9 and not an F1.

With an F1, you're not really talking about a domestic cat, so all bets are kind of off imo. I wish I could give advice, but I have no experience or even much reading about cats like that. In the 6 years I've been on this forum, there have been 3 or 4 people here who have owned F1's. Unfortunately, none of them were or are "regulars" or ever posted more than a few photos and such, so we never learned much about living with such a cat.

I think your best bet might be to do a forum search on "F1" see if you can find these people, and message them.

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The little monsters 3

Hello and thanks to everyone, I does seem that it's his hunting prey instinct kicking in,,, but oddly semi weird to kick in at a year and half old... His food Routine is always the same, breakfast around 630-7am, and dinner at 4pm, with about a half cup of dry food always out for him, we never remove the dry,, only top it up when it's empty,, I'd say he's eating enough,, but might be worth it to try the bed time feeding as well and see if that helps. I agree,, with an F1 it's been interesting... every weeks seems to be something new,, sometimes good, some times bad, sometimes shocking! :) but it's worth it, I adopted him as a difficult to home cat... go figure......

I can imagine an F1 is not for the faint hearted. With this kind of behaviour he is showing, it might be an idea to vary his eating routine so he does not know exactly what time/and how his meal is coming (not easy first thing in the morning, I understand). I know with my boy who is an F9 that he knows he gets fed at 4pm. If, god forbid, I am ten minutes late and doing something unbelievably cruel like having five minutes reading the newspaper, he will come and eyeball me then bite my foot. It's quite gentle but the pressure increases if I don't move it! Stupidly, I always laugh and get up and feed him. This, as Brian quite rightly points out to lots of people, is me being completely trained and controlled by my cat! I guess, what I'm saying is with an F1 this kind of positive reaction to unwanted behaviour could get out of hand quickly, so make sure in all that you do you are not rewarding (by feeding) unwanted behaviour. Maybe wait until he is calm and quiet to feed him and vary when, where and who feeds him? Just throwing out ideas as dealing with an F1 is something very few of us have experience with. Good luck and keep us posted with how you are doing.

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Melissa

UK
Oscar - Rescue (Rascal!!!) Bengal

F1s are as close as you can get to the ALC without actually having one. I would say the eating is mostly instinctive! And that can probably change for the cat out in the wild. We have members who own F1s, but (as Brian said), they do not post regularly.

I always give my kitties a little dry snack before bedtime. Things go much smoother throughout the night and morning that way. Both of my cats bring on the naughty behavior when they want their food. One pushes everything off any surface she can get up onto. The other one gnaws on my wood furniture. I guess they do these things so I will hurry up. Now that the edges of my furniture are all chewed up, I put a cardboard box in front of the teak planter Grace likes to chew. While I prepare their food, she stands there rubbing her face and chews on the edges of the cardboard box. Grace also beats up Blondie if I am late in putting the food down. Maybe position an awesome scratcher or object that can distract your cat while you fix the food? Feeding time is such an important part of the day for our kitties. It's almost as if they are having a little temper tantrum because they want their food and have to wait for us to put it in their bowl.

I have two bengals with very different feeding patterns and preferences. Sheba used to be agreesive and growl at eating but now I make sure she has a constant supply of wet food for grazing (Sheeba allergic to biscuits) (microchipped feeder) and ruby and stickle have another microchipped bowl with dry food for grazing.

If he's just eating chicken wings he may not be getting all,the nutrients that he needs and may be craving nutrients . , here we have a mixture of kidney, heart, meat, tripe with whole chicken frames ground up. Yesterday ruby went and caught a rabbit, left the legs but ate all the internal organs, the day before they ate 2 lambs kidneys, today will be lambs heart and ground chicken frames.

I have never known cats eat as voraciously as these two bengals and they love offal and fresh meat.

Hope that can be of some assistance

Thanks for all the advise, I've put different ideas to the test, playing with him white preping, feeding more,, mixing up the feeding times... it does seem to be calming down a bit, oh and i always make sure he has a big bowl of dry food out all the time. When he is really in full hunt mode i just have to grab a jacket or small blanket, he always keeps his distance, as he knows a blanket usually means he's going in the crate for a car ride... Having an F1 has been interesting, I adopted him as a difficult to house cat from a bengal rescue of sorts..... he has honestly put a stain on my marriage, and even my life. When he was younger he got out, I found him hours later scared out of his mind in a yard not too far away.. When I picked him up he bit into my knuckle to the bone, lets just say I spent the next 4 days in the hospital with blood poisoning, He's the weirdest animal we have ever rescued, one week hes great,, jumps up in bed and stares at us,, gives great body pumps and purrs when we get home, the next week he's doing something new to piss us off, it always seems like one step forward 2 back,,, I just hope in the end its worth it... I feel it will be but it will take plenty of time.

An F1 is certainly a challenge, and while beautiful, are not for your ordinary cat person. They do have behavioral problems. My F9 puts a strain on my 47-year marriage, so I can only imagine what an F1 will do. It was wonderful of you to rescue the guy, but I'm guessing they did not give you advance warning on how difficult it can be to deal with an EG bengal. In fact, in many areas they are banned due to their wild instincts (or you have to have a license to keep them). All you can do is hang in there and realize that this is the way an F1 behaves. A bengal, period, is not like your ordinary cat. An F1 -- is more like the Asian Leopard Cat from which he came.