A British woman has been forced to put locks on her refrigerator and kitchen cabinets so that her 24-pound cat doesn’t break in and steal even more food. The kitty, Keith, was rescued by Sarah Matthews for her daughter’s tenth birthday and while she was aware that the little guy had some health issues, she had no idea that he would go from being 11 pounds to 24 pounds over the past seven years. That’s a big cat!
- They’ve always had to have locks on doors that contained food. Sara said, as per Metro: We’ve had child locks on the fridge ever since we got Keith. At first, he would clamber in when you opened it, and I was just so worried he’d get trapped without us noticing.” Over the years, they’ve had to continue locking more and more cupboards in their kitchen, she said, adding: “It doesn’t matter whether it’s a circular knob handle or a pulley, he will find a way in.”
- Keith will stop at nothing to get to the goods. Sara said that she believed she was “Keith-proofing” one cabinet by putting a heavy bag of cat litter in front of it. However, where there’s a will, there’s a way because Keith managed to move the litter out of the way to get into his bags of food in the cupboard.
- His food is now kept in special containers. Sara keeps Keith’s food in plastic airtight containers with click-down lids so that he literally can’t get in. “We’ve tried puzzle feeders to slow him down, but he’s just tipped them over,” she said.
- Keith has always had gastrointestinal problems. When he was first adopted, he was undernourished and was put on a special diet. However, that didn’t stop him from sneaking out of his cage to steal the other cats’ food, thereby making himself sicker.
- Despite all the measures they took, Keith kept getting bigger. “Right from the start, he would eat anything, even weird things. He loves green foods, so any vegetables weren’t safe from him, even if they were on the stove,” Sara recalled of the months following her adoption of Keith. “Straight away the vets put him on a diet with veterinary food, and we bought feeders for our other cats that meant only they could get in because of a chip in their collars.” So how did he get so big? He was going through the neighbors’ trash cans!
- Keith is now an indoor cat and is on a special veterinary diet. Believing that he may have had some undiagnosed medical conditions such as Cushing’s disease or diabetes, Sara paid out for tests on Keith but all of them came back negative. “‘Keith has had lots of tests at the vets over the years but nothing has proven conclusive. We thought he might have a problem with his pituitary gland, but that hasn’t been confirmed,” she explained. He’s now limited to 50g of food a day, though he always tries to find ways to get more. At least he’s happy and loved!
