"Classic Pate"

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I just stacked 32 cans of catfood (I do love that they sell by the case now) in the cupboard. One of them had a folded piece of paper wrapped in plastic tucked in below the pull ring, so I got the scissors (damn untearable plastic) to get it out, in case it was a coupon – and was greeted witht the news that there is a New Look! and New Names! for the Same Great Flavors! of Friskies canned food, coming soon.

Intrigued, I read on … they showed an old can of their Friskies Salmon Dinner, with insturctions to Look For the new can – Friskies Salmon Dinner Classic Pate.

My two current cats, like my old cat, don’t like the freakin’ sliced, chunked, flaked, or nuggeted food – they want their bits o’ animal protein ground to a uniform consistency, like god intended. So I have spent some time crouched in the petfood aisle, reading labels, to make sure what that’s what I buy.* Catfood makers are reluctant to describe their product as “ground,” even when that’s what it is – they will use the word for single-product stuff, like “ground chicken,” but the various mixes of mystery meat like “Mariner’s Catch” and “Super Supper” don’t describe the texture of the enclosed melange, so you have to know that they’re ground.

But now we can avoid the whole downscale resonance of that, and know that we’re not getting the little dears ground catfood – we’re getting them Classic Pate – food fit for a feline overlord.

Honest to god, I hope whoever came up with this got a big honkin’ bonus – it’s marketing genius.

*Do I spoil them? No – I run a “take-it-or-leave-it” household, but am cheap – er, frugal – enough to object to throwing out most of a bowl of catfood when, after 24 hours, they have emphatically left it. Spoiling cats involves feeding each of three cats something different – one of them getting shrimp from shrimp cocktail platters prepared and sold as people food, which is what a former coworker of mine did. That, my friends, can only be described as pussy-whipped. (She has since died, and today would have been her birthday – RIP, Sandy.)

2

My aunt used to give her cat shrimp cocktail from people food platters. But only on it’s birthday and on New Year’s. And the cat didn’t get the whole platter–my aunt got her share. That strikes me as generous but not absurdly so. More than twice a yearly shrimp cocktail for a cat? Definitely absurdly generous.

3

It took me a while to clue in that you were talking about pâté, especially in the context of cat food. :slight_smile: (“Pate” is a little different.)

4

Mine liked all the kinds, but I always bought the “pate” because it was easier to split up in three dishes (they only got it for a treat.)

5

Have you ever read All My Patients are Under the Bed? One of the stories in it tells about a woman who indulged her pet to the point that the only food the cat would eat was Japanese crab meat–and the cat could tell the difference between, say, Japanese and Alaskan crab meat! Which might not have been a problem, except for World War II…

6

I saw the same flyer yesterday when I unpacked the weeks load of food. Our cats are the same way: they mainly like the pate-type. And Og help me if I try to slip the cheap stuff from Wal-Mart past them. It will sit there for weeks. They’d rather starve than switch.

But I do slip a little of the “Lamb & Rice” or “Turkey & Liver” chunks into their bowls. It’s small chunks and the kittens love it.

7

Mine are exactly the same way and my grocery store also keeps the brand I buy on the very bottom shelves.

8

Could be worse. I read it as “Pete.” :smack:

9

Your cats sound exactly like mine. I did stock up on cat food this morning and noticed about half of it was in the new packaging. I have found a the few times I accidently bought the chopped, chipped or flaked stuff, I mush it up in a mini blender and the cat’s don’t notice the difference because it looks like the “pate” variety.

10

What is it about the fuzzbutts that they won’t eat this chunked, flaked kittyfood? And what is it about petfood makers that they keep making it? Does anybody’s cat like this stuff? (Mine doesn’t.)

11

I had one who did. Monsterkitty :frowning: would not deign to even sniff at ground/pate gooshyfood, period-end-of-discussion, shutUP!!!. He wanted sliced or cubed with gravy canned food. He would smell, but then turn up his nose at ground “seafood flavor” gooshyfood. Even when his thyroid levels were back to normal after losing 13 (yes, thirteen, from a HEALTHY twenty-two) pounds.

He gained back two pounds on Starkist albacore tuna in water. Chicken of the Sea was ignored. He felt any and all human food was insulting to his feline-isity, except for perhaps raw spinach and canned mandarin oranges, if no one, including Ceiling Cat, could see him.

Cats is weird.

(ETA – the other two will eat anything. Including Pizza and asparagus.)

12

I wondered if twicks had somehow met my father and was commenting on the classic hairstyle he shares with many other octogenarians. :stuck_out_tongue:

13

Our cat will only eat the Friskies shredded (turkey and cheese, or chicken and salmon flavours). She doesn’t like the paté or the chunks, just the shredded.

14

My old cat, Molly, wouldn’t eat the ground stuff. She also didn’t care for tiny, chopped stuff. It had to be hearty slices or chunks, in gravy. The kind that come in tear-open packettes. As she slowly succumbed to old age, she lost her taste for her usual dry food, so the last several years of her life were spent in cat-food luxury, eating only sliced, chunked meats smothered in gravy, with the occasional treat of canned albacore.

I just discovered yesterday that my current cat, Quinne, still retains some feralness (I rescued her from the streets); I treated her to her first packette of sliced meat ‘n’ gravy yesterday, and she proceeded to shake each piece of meat to death before dropping it on the floor for some final batting around; only when she was sure that she had properly killed the meat slice would she eat it. Today, I’ll have a bit of cleaning to do in the kitchen, and I think her next treat is going to be ground up.