Ever since Nellie’s parents adopted her, they’ve noticed that she really, really likes food. She’s always struck them as being way more dog-like than cat-like because of how food-motivated she is, and they’ve even been able to use her love of treats to teach her a few tricks.
“She lives to eat instead of eating to live,” Allison Riebel, Nellie’s mom, told The Dodo. “She loves her cat food and she loves her cat treats. We use her love of snacks to practice learning tricks. She’s become good at sit, high five and loves to play fetch.”
On her quest for snacks, Nellie often gets herself stuck or into places she’s not supposed to be — and even when her parents think that something is safe from her antics, Nellie is always quick to prove them wrong.
Riebel is a veterinary student, and recently she decided to bake some cookies for her fellow volunteers at the Wildlife Medical Clinic through the University of Illinois. She put some of the cookies in a sealed Tupperware container, figuring they’d be safe in there — but unfortunately, they weren’t safe at all.
“Nellie somehow opened the container and took all the cookies out and onto the floor,” Riebel said. “The funny thing is I know she took them all out separately because if she had just knocked them out of the container, the cookies would have broken. But they were spread out across our dining room floor with little bites out of each. So she took them all out separately and chopped them all separately and did it quietly enough to not get noticed.”
At some point, Nellie knocked something over, so Riebel took a break from studying and came downstairs to see what was going on — and found her cookies on the floor, with a bite taken out of every single one. Nellie didn’t even try to pretend it wasn’t her, and instead seemed pretty pleased with herself that she had managed to find such yummy snacks.
“She did not seem guilty,” Riebel said. “She plays it off very well. It’s both infuriating and hilarious. She’s very proud of herself.”
It seems that Nellie’s parents are going to have to find Tupperware that’s a little more cat-proof as Nellie continues on her lifelong quest for food.
