Food Aggression

Have any of you come across this with your cats? I've experienced it with dogs, but not with cats. Our new kitten does it sometimes with a toy she has just "caught". We have feathers on the end of a string and when we go to pull it to keep playing, sometimes she will growl at us. Tonight she was nibbling at something on the floor, and when my husband went to pick her up to see what it was she turned and growled and hissed at him. We want to discourage this behavior while she is young, as we fear she might get more territorial, or she may turn on our other cat as she gets older. Any ideas on this?

That's not really food aggression, but prey drive, it's instinctual, you can't really turn it off.
Cat play is all about honing hunting instincts.
All of my cats have done it, and all grew out of it except on rare occasions of getting a bit wound up during play.

No injuries to humans or felines have ever resulted.