Why my cat thinks he can cook steak too — Anyone else have a kitchen ninja who won't stop "helping" with dinner? I bought the fancy ceramic grill pan last week and this morning found whiskers lying face-down in it like a fallen soldier at battle stat

Opening thread commentary.

My house has three of these and every single one thinks they're a sous-chef. Ours tried to "help" make scrambled eggs last Sunday by batting at the whisk until he got his own egg, which was also spectacular. The solution that worked for me is actually just accepting it — I put out a ceramic bowl on the counter with some leftover cooked chicken or fish and let him do whatever work he wants while I cook. He gets his "helping" fix and I get to sear my steak in peace. Building a fence would be an engineering project nobody needs.

Oh my god mine does this too and it is the most absurd behavior I have ever witnessed because of course he has decided that cooking is a shared responsibility — like, Whisker's been stalking me around the stove for three days now with this look of intense concentration and yesterday was the final straw because I left a steak marinating on the counter for exactly four minutes to get it in the fridge while I ran upstairs and when I came back he had knocked the entire dish onto the floor and then sat there looking at me like "problem solved chef" which is not how physics works but apparently his brain operates differently. Honestly this reminds me so much of my uncle Larry who used to make these elaborate lasagna dishes on Thanksgiving that took him about six hours each because he would insist on hand-rolling every single noodle even though we all knew there was a bag of pre-made ones in the pantry and I remember standing in his kitchen watching him work with this level of focused dedication and thinking how much like my cat's steak obsession it actually was — just this absolute refusal to accept that there is an easier path forward because you can do something artisanal even if nobody asked for it. Anyway sorry, my brain went down a rabbit hole but the point is I think you should build a fenced zone because my brother tried the "two chefs" approach with his cat and ended up with a scorched floor and a very confused animal who now refuses to enter any room that has heat in it which was not the intended outcome of this partnership.