For the record, we do and have done all of those things. This isn't a story about my dog getting aggressive with the cats. If anything, we need to make a point of keeping the cats out of her food bowl because she will let them take her food away, all the while looking at us to please do something. It's just that she seems to sometimes get ambivalent about whether she is in fact hungry or not... but that ambiguity immediately disappears if a cat comes over and sniffs her bowl.