I had some cats (different than the one I just mentioned above) who would always come over to check-out what I was eating but even if I broke off a nibble for them they wouldn’t eat it. They’d be interested and sniff it but then walk away.
Cats are weird.
I hope he got locked in with a bit of pizza!
What the cats were thinking after they sniffed your food, and couldn’t figure out why you wanted to eat it:
“Humans are weird.”
They didn’t want you to get any ideas about snacking on their cat food.
Before I sold my canner, I bought a cheese pumpkin at a roadside standing, and spread out a towel on the living room floor and put a cutting board on it to cut it up while I watched TV. I still had both cats, and my male (RIP) ignored it, but the cat I still have hooked a chunk of that raw pumpkin and ran off with it, and ate it. I half expected to clean up partially digested pumpkin, but that didn’t happen (until I scooped the litterbox, KWIM?) and I’ve offered her squash or pumpkin since but she’s never wanted it.
She must have known that this particular fruit had something in it that her body needed.
A few weeks ago I was eating some Asiago cheese chips and Rascal came over and started licking at a broken piece. So I picked up that piece and tossed it down to the floor. He jumped down and nuzzled it, then totally ignored it for the rest of the day.
Kinda…we’d lure him in with a nibble of pizza and then scoop him up and lock him in a room till we were done.
I get he loved pizza but pizza did not like him. Whether the dairy or oil or something else his digestive system was never happy about it. And I had to clean that up.
He didn’t care and would eat all he could get if you let him. I can’t imagine the disaster that might have become.
But, he got his nibble which was fine.
My two cats loved popcorn. Maybe it was the butter and/or salt because they both would lick any kernel that hit the floor before batting it around and chomping until it was gone.
Yeah, I didn’t let the coffee-bean-loving cat get at a whole bag of beans at a sitting, either! I never found out how many he would have eaten; but the results might have been even more disasterous.
Sometimes a nibble is as much as is safe.
Yeah; I wonder whether some of the corn-loving cats are actually after the butter, though some of them in this thread clearly seem to be after the corn.
When my butternut-squash lover first expressed himself on the subject I was making pies, and I thought at first that he was after the pie crust because it had butter in it. But no, he rapidly made it clear that he was after the squash; and the squash didn’t have eggs and milk in it yet, it was still just squash.
I’ve not heard of a cheese pumpkin, but I had a cat that was crazy for whatever pumpkin you purchase at the grocery store… Only time I ever have a pumpkin is at Halloween, and for eight years, my Nermal would stand around watching me cut the top off, doing the twitchy jaw thing. As soon as I got the lid off, she’d stick her head in and I’d be cleaning pumpkin shmutz off her for days.
It’s called that because it looks like a wheel of cheese.
You don’t want to use these for jack o’lanterns because they have a hard rind, thick flesh, and a small seed cavity. They are designed for eating.
Oh yeah. I’ve definitely seen those but had no idea of their specific name and always just thought of them as “gourds”. Thanks for explaining that. Also, it set me down a deep rabbit hole of pumpkin soup recipes.
I had a cat who loved raw mushroom. I dropped a bit once and he ate it with obvious pleasure, so I gave him another bit and he ate that too. From then on, whenever I prepared mushrooms, I’d give him a few bits.
Never made him sick or had any apparent ill effect on him.
I have two cats that go crazy for unripened barley. Give them a few stalks and they will play with it for hours. They don’t eat it, just treat it as a cat toy, batting it around and jumping on it. It seems to have almost the same effect as catnip.
My sister’s cat love’s to eat ear wax. Yesterday my nephew stuck his finger in his ear and offered to the cat. It licked his finger and was thrilled about it.
Midnight, our very first cat (now long gone) loved corn. If you were shucking ears of corn for corn on the cob, she demanded some of the leaves and a few of the raw kernels.
Homer, bless his soul, at one point expressed an interest in kernel corn. I thought maybe the kernels were some kind of bulk he wanted for digestive purposes. I put some in his dish to see what would happen. What happened was that his interest was in batting around all the kernels with his paw. I tried again with cream corn, but he sniffed it and just walked away. Needless to say, I didn’t want to vacuum up kernels batted hither and yon, so I never gave him any again.
In most terminology gourds are actually the inedible kinds, bred for their hard shells and interesting and/or useful shapes. There isn’t generally much flesh and what there is generally isn’t worth eating.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the known fact that “cats can’t taste sweet things” will go the way of “cats are colorblind”. Wrong, and proven so one day.
I’ve had cats that loved corn, and one who went nuts for applesauce, having some for breakfast nearly everyday.
I’ve seen cats go for ice cream and yogurt too.
Indeed, despite the myth, cats aren’t completely colorblind—they just see colors differently than we do. Unlike humans, who have three types of cone cells (red, green, and blue), cats have fewer, especially for red. This means they mainly see shades of blue and greenish-yellow, while reds and pinks look gray or washed out.
Cats don’t have the taste receptor for sweetness (T1R2), so sugary flavors likely mean nothing to them. But they may still be drawn to sweet-smelling foods, (mainly those rich in fat), even though they don’t actually taste the sweetness.
Several of our cats have gone for ice cream. But only vanilla. They wouldn’t touch other flavors.