I have two cats, and I'm now seriously considering getting a little dog. I'm thinking that food will be a problem. When I'm around, I can tell them "NO, don't eat each other's food." What happens when we're sleeping or not home?

Any suggestions?

If you feed them both at specific times, I'd think they would exhaust their supplies and their bowls would be empty until the next feeding. So hopefully overnight there wouldn't be any food to steal.

When I feed my cats, they just gobble it all down in a few minutes. There's nothing left! And when we had a dog, it was the same way. Back in those days, we'd often overfeed our pets a bit and there would at times be "left overs" particularly in the cat food, but for the most part we were lucky that our dogs never cared for the cat's food.

It's not that way with our cats. I keep dry food down all the time, and they get canned food once, maybe twice a day. They don't eat that in one sitting either. I'm screwed.

My Grandparents had a similar problem and bought one of those gates intended to keep young children from going into other rooms. They were able to feed the cats and keep the puppy at bay at the same time. Since the cats were able to jump over the gate, they gave him his food in the bathroom or another part of the house with the door closed to keep the cats away.

we put the cat food up on a small table in front of a window where they can eat and watch the birdies, at first the dog would occasionally try to get up tyhere and steal the cat food, but some punishment and scolding has got her trained off of that now (it helps that one of our cats freaks out and chases the dog off whenever she tries to go near HER food, or into one of HER rooms)

a couple of the cats will drink the dog's water or sometimes even nibble on the dog food a bit, but I don't think its a big deal. One of our cats sometimes likes to stand IN the dog's food bowl and just stare the dog down until she gives up and goes away.

Try to have the dog and cat interact for a bit then have the dog in the room for awhile then try again...

Food I think if your cats can, just have the cat food on the table or on the chair and have them eat it there. I don't know what kind of dog you will get but there are some dogs that will eat too much.

I never had a problem with the dog and cat eating the other's food.
The cat thought the dog's food was disgusting, and the dog much preferred
those caramels in the litter box. I told him they would spoil his supper, but
he ate them anyway.