If your cat steals food when you’re not looking — or even when you are — here’s some help.

By Ilene Springer

He’s so quick, that cat of yours. You leave dinner’s leftovers on the counter for no more than a minute — and there he is, diving off the counter with a piece of chicken cacciatore locked in his jaws when you walk back into the room. Why does this happen? Is your cat a naturally born thief? Well, yes and no.

“Cats are predators,” says Stefanie Schwartz, DVM, MSc, a board certified veterinary behaviorist and director of behavior services at the VCA South Shore Animal Hospital in Weymouth, Massachusetts. “They investigate their territory and might snatch away something that attracts them to get a closer look or a taste of…

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