Eating food that isn’t yours, especially when you know the owner of it is looking forward to eating it, is never ok. This comes up all the time in roommate and house-sharing situations, and also in workplace break room fridges where grown adults will inexplicably help themselves to the lunch you brought yourself from home.
A birthday cake is an especially egregious example of this, possibly the most egregious. After all, a birthday is specifically intended to celebrate someone, and by eating it before they’ve had a chance to blow out their candles, you’re committing the ethical crime of stealing their thunder and taking the chance to be recognized away from them.
Based on how coddled this cousin seems to be and the fact that his mother can’t possibly accept that he has done any wrong, it would lead one to believe that this is exactly what happened. At least in part, the older teen was trying to remove the chance of someone else
This whole scenario is oddly reminiscent of that scene from the first Harry Potter where Dudley ends up with a tail, but I’m not sure whether or not this makes this an untrue account of events, or if it’s just a weird coincidence.
