I read an article in Cat Fancy recently that said that some cats prefer to forage for their food rather than have it given to them. Maybe that’s what your Siamese attack kittens enjoy about the Cheerios. Playing with their food is certainly natural instinctive behavior for cats.
My Luna is like that. She gets a good brand of cat food. But what she really likes are her cheap kitty treats, in which the first ingredient is cornmeal. She has also jumped up onto the stove to take bites out of a pan of cornbread that I left out (figuring a carnivore wouldn’t bother it). I won’t get her cheap cat food, but I suspect she would like it.
Another funny thing about Luna’s eating habits- she’s more eager to go after pieces of dry cat food when they’re sprinkled around the floor than when they’re all in her bowl. We suspect it’s because, when we give her a treat, we skitter it across the floor, so she thinks the food might be treats instead of regular cat food.
A friend of mine has a cat that will bat individual kbbles out of her bowl, and “stalk” them, finally pouncing and gobbling them up. It’s fun to watch.
In a related story, my cat (who loves to hunt the mice that bother us) was playing under the dining room table not to long ago. I thought he was playing with the laces in my daughter’s boots. Upon closer inspection, he had caught and killed a baby mouse, and was hiding it under her boot, so he could “find” it again!
My boy Bobby lost all but a few of his back teeth before I adopted him, so for the past couple of years I’ve given him nothing but wet food. He’s a pretty good eater, and I’ll typically go through two cans of food a day.
My roommate also has a cat (Amanda) whose bowl of dry food has been tucked away in the closet as a matter of convenience. We’ve caught Bobby sneaking into the closet at night and scarfing on that food, and a few days ago we set Amanda’s bowl out in the open. Since then, Bobby hasn’t even touched the wet stuff. So, yknow, hell with it. If he’s able to eat it (something I thought he couldn’t do for a long time), he’s welcome to it. The dry food’s cheaper anyway.
I’m not too surprised that a cat with no back teeth can eat dry food.
Warning: this is gross, so I’m putting it in a spoiler box.
As some people who have had to clean up cat vomit know, cats don’t generally chew dry food. They swallow it whole, and you sometimes find whole pieces of food in their puke.
My cat loves, just loves corn chips. I know they’re bad for her (and me, too), so she doesn’t get much. Just whatever we accidentally drop, and little tiny pieces that she chases across the floor. Less than one chip per time, really.
She has no problem eating any of the food my vet recommended (it’s definitely on the pricy side).
She does not care for champagne. I learned this over New Years when we put a saucer with a little bit of champagne on the floor for her to celebrate with the rest of us. She sniffed at it, made a weird face, then wandered away. A few minutes later, she came back, sniffed at it again, then stood over it and pawed at the floor. We humans were puzzled for a few moments, until I realized that she had decided that something that smelled that bad must be waste, and you’re supposed to bury waste. It’s my own fault that the kitchen floor isn’t made out of kitty litter; she was doing her best.
We all had a good laugh and then gave her some kitty treats.
My cat was originally my grandmother’s cat. She was brought up on a steady diet of “no frills” cat food, both dry and wet, in all flavours - beef, chicken, liver, fish, whatever. She ate it.
Grandparents moved into a gated retirement community with a “no pets” rule, and we inherited the cat.
The cat who’s now decided she’ll only eat one brand of fish-flavoured dry food and another brand of fish-flavoured wet food. Both of which aren’t the “no frills” variety. She will now leave food in her bowl for days on end rather than eating it if it’s the “wrong” sort. She’ll happily eat chicken or beef if I’m preparing it for us and she’ll eat icecream from our bowls or lick up curry sauce. But god forbid I give her chicken and liver flavoured cat food. She may just kill me in my sleep.
I have two theories. One, she’s getting kinda old so may just be getting fussy in her dotage. Or two, she’s still pissed that Grandma and Grandpa packed her up and shipped her out to us and she’s punishing us for it by making us buy the more expensive crap.
Does anyone else’s cat do this? Both of my cats “bury” their food dish when I feed them. Are they telling me I’m feeding them crap? They eat it with no qualms, though.
It’s actually just a test to be sure that you are still loyal to them and to be certain that they still have full control of the house. They give you this little test by turning up their noses at certain foods and seeing how long it takes you to get them something else.
My cats, Snickers and Biscuit, prefer dry food to wet. We feed them Nutro Indoor Cat dry food, which they can’t get enough of, and they split a small can of wet food at night. They usually don’t finish the wet food, but they like it enough that we keep giving it to them.
Biscuit loves crunchy carbs (takes after me!)- bread crust, cheetos, chips- both of them like certain table scraps, like cheese and anything that used to swim. Biscuit does something weird with table scraps- she will take a piece of food in her mouth and shake it before she eats it. I guess she's trying to kll it.
I doubt that happens often, as a deliberate stubborness. But cats are apparently prone to hepatic lipidosis, wherein a fasting cat can, potentially, get itself into a medically bad condition sometimes in as little as a couple of days of fasting. Apparently the liver fails to efficiently process the fat stores being broken down by the fasting cat, it then gets clogged up and the animal essentially becomes anorexic and unable to feed, declining rapidly.
So less voluntary starving themselves, than vulnerable to badly damaging themselves when going into a food snit ( or stressed or sick or whatever ).
The Gryff is not an overly picky eater for a cat, something for which I am very grateful. He’ll eat just about any cat food type or brand, but there are some that I know are his favorites because he absolutely spazzes out when they are served.
He likes people food, but he’s good with the not-begging at the table. He likes to eat a tiny serving (about the size of a peanut) of whatever we’re eating, and then he goes on his merry way. The exceptions are peanut butter, which he will beg for as soon as he smells it, and turkey, which sends him into St. Teresa-like fits of ecstasy.
One thing he is picky about is Meow Mix seafood-flavored dried food. It has four flavors of kibble, and he doesn’t like the crab flavor and will eat around it. Or rather, he did eat around it, but I felt badly about giving him crab-tainted food so now I remove the crab pieces ahead of time.
Obligatory picture of Gryffin, blurry but still cute, he’s opening his Christmas presents.
I’ve had cats that would do this after they had finished eating and there was still food in the bowl. I was told that this was an instinctive behavior (although apparently not all cats have it), but I can’t remember if they were supposed to be hiding the food for later, or burying it to dispose of it.
To go back to the subject of cat food flavors, I wonder what would happen if they came out with mouse or rat flavored cat food?
