They beg, they vocalize, they entwine themselves around your legs, they rub your legs, they start the “I’m starving” dance when they hear you open the can!!! You put the food in the dish and set the dish down. “It’s your favorite!” you say.
The sniff the dish, lick the “gravy” off and walk away.
How much canned cat food do YOU throw out?
Ursala Kitteh gets a small can in the morning, the other half at night. She eats pretty much all of it. She would prefer only kibble, but too bad. She gets 1/4 cup kibble at bedtime.
Yeah, I always wondered why they don’t just sell “cat gravy” so you don’t have to bother with the squishy lumps that just dry out and get tossed.
Dare I suggest that in at least some cases the cats are not really that hungry? They are, so to speak, eating the icing off the cupcake and leaving the rest.
The same way that a cat that isn’t hungry will still kill a mouse but not eat it.
how do you store that other half because in my experience the fridge is death to cat food?
They do. Hartz makes it. It comes in little packets with about a tablespoon of stuff in it. It’s kind of expensive but it’s the only way I can get my cat to take his glucosamine.
I used to throw out quite a lot as I tried finding wet foods that my dry food loving cat would actually eat instead of just poking at. I stuck with it and learned that texture is everything and seafood is crack. (I only give him seafood for breakfast as a compromise to limit mercury intake.)
As long as it’s a Chunky, Sliced, or Fillet variety of Fancy Feast, he loves it. Anything else, which usually has way too much gravy, he turns up his nose at. He hates wet food that is too wet!
I don’t have any cats now, but the ones I had in the past would only eat canned food if it was the ground variety. If it was a stew, chunks or whatever in gravy they’d only lap up the gravy and leave the rest behind.
They would get a spoonful of ground canned food mixed with dry food. The rest would be stored in the fridge. I bought plastic lids for cat & dog food cans. The cats never seemed to mind that the food had been refrigerated.
My cats will eat pretty much anything, including one that used to insist on having the seeds and pulp when I cut a cantelope.
The key, I’ve found, is to add a healthy splash of water into the dish to make more gravy; as they lap up the gravy, they’ll catch food b/c they have to get deeper to do so.
Having more than one cat helps, too, but that’s an extreme solution!
If you have to put it in the fridge, put it in a ziploc and then nuke it 5 seconds to serve again. No guarantees, but if they eat a little more it’s that much less of a waste.
I found organ meats seem to elicit that response in cats especially.
I wish I had a dollar for every can of food I’ve thrown out because the Siamese refused to eat it. These 2 are so-ooooo picky. By the time I think ‘oh good, one they like’, pouf! It’s over. They will never eat it again. My local shelter loves me because I tend to over buy, when their hignesses turn their nose up, i donate the remaining.
Many moons ago, when I had Livvy the cat, her vet told me that cats like their food warm. His explanation was that cats don’t have good noses, and so they judge whether food is safe by whether it has cooled off all the way. They are predators, not scavengers.
I started nuking her food and voila! She began eating like a fiend. We never had any trouble after that.
Noir Kitty prefers pate style and has no problem eating it cold.
The Big Crow will heat it up with a little hot water and sometimes add some cooked pumpkin for Noir’s constipation issues. He gives it to him in the wee hours before going to bed. Sometimes when I get up, I find Noir hasn’t eaten much of it and I wind up tossing it out. But most of the time, it’s all gone.
Noir would prefer an all dry diet, I think, with kibble tossed one by one so he can chase and pounce on them but he needs the extra moisture canned food provides so that isn’t going to happen.
Tonka and Creamsicle got gooshy food only occasionally as a special treat. When Creamsicle took ill, we tried giving her the canned food; so of course Tonka got some too. After Creamsicle died, Tonka continued to get wet food. Now he expects it, and he knows when it’s getting close to 1830.
We buy Purina, I think. Mrs. L.A. insists upon whatever brand it is, because that brand was not caught up in the making-your-cat-sick-and-killing-them thing several years ago. The cans are about the size of tuna tins. I cut the ‘puck’ into four quarters (paté is easy to cut, and isn’t as messy when Tonka eats as shreds or bits are), and Tonka gets one quarter can per night. When I put the lid on the unused portion and take it back to the fridge, he follows me. Apparently he forgets that he’d just watched me put some food on the dish. When I put the dish next to his bowl, he thanks me with a head-but and eats with his tail held erect.
Needless to say, there’s never any leftovers.
Cover the open can with tin foil. A little lid, so to speak. The can stays in the fridge for 12 hours and it’s fine. She eats the small cans, the size of Fancy Feast, half a can in the morning and the other half at night. And yes, I reuse the foil lids.
Also available in cat face.
I feed Rary one half can of wet food on Sundays. He knows it’s Sunday. I have to ration it out for him because if I give him the entire half at once he eats it too fast and sicks it back up.
He has no problem eating it cold, and the rest of the week it’s dry food.
I use those plastic cat food can lids. My cat gets half a can of (seafood) Fancy Feast in the morning, then I cap the can and stick it in the freezer. Then half a can of (non-seafood) FF at night, capped and put in the freezer, which is also when I take the morning’s can out of the freezer and put it in the fridge to defrost. First thing in the morning, I take the plastic cap off the can from the fridge and put it on top of the toaster for one toast cycle and for a few minutes after so that the food is usually slightly warm.
I have noticed that my cat seems to more reliably eat every last bit and clean the plate when the food is slightly warm, but when I open a fresh can, I don’t bother with the warming - this ain’t the Chateau Meowmont!
We mix the serving of wet food with a bit of water and nuke it just enough to warm it up a bit. Zen noshes on it over a couple of hours or so. He likes it warm when served but seems OK with it cooling off before he finishes it.
He only gets half of a small can (currently his taste runs to Fancy Feast Chicken Primavera paté) a day, and kibble for the rest of his meals. Any of the chunks and gravy type food he, and most of our previous cats, will lick up the gravy and mostly leave the chunks. (Nixie wouldn’t, but she was a feral rescue and would hoover up anything put in front of her. Ate more than any of the others but remained a tiny little black thing all her life.)