We have two cats. Chet is older, friendly, isn't picky about what he eats, and weighs about what he should. Dante is cautious about the world, loves drinking water, doesn't like any food except crunchy cat food, and has tipped the scale at about 25 pounds. We needed a way for Chet to eat normal amounts, for Dante to eat normal amounts, and for Dante to not eat any of Chet's food.

Also, Chet throws up a lot. He's got a bit of a sensitive stomach, plus I'm convinced he just does it for funsies. We switched Chet from dry food to mostly wet food (and the occasional dry supplement) to help reduce his throwing up problems. I don't know if it helped his stomach issues that much, but it ended up being a great first step toward controlling Dante's weight: Chet loves the wet food so much that he really doesn't care to go back to dry food.

So we accidentally fell into step one, with Chet primarily eating wet food and Dante happily sticking with the dry food.

Step two was a big one. In step two, I created the cheesebox. The cheesebox is where Chet eats his food. The doorway is thin enough to allow Chet entry, but Dante is a bit too wide to get in. The cheesebox will help keep Dante from stealing Chet's food, something which he used to do pretty often.

I've seen the cheesebox work a handful of times when Dante was curious or hungry enough to try to get into the cheesebox but couldn't.

The third step was the simplest: better moderation of Dante's food. This control method is a lot easier now that Dante's food very specifically comes only from one source.

We've had this system in place for a few weeks now. The change has been slow, but Dante is down to about 21 pounds as of this past weekend.

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