“Meow! meow! meowwww!”, goes my kitty, with the curling walk around the legs. “Feed me!”
I go over to her feeding bowl. She runs over excitedly, purring, headbutting my leg.
I pour in the Meow Mix. She leaps forward, thrusts her head close to the food, examining it, inspecting it, inhaling its odor.
Then, without even a backwards glance at either the bowl or up at me, she turns her head up and to the side, nose high in the air, and silently trots off. Not even worth my time.
And not just the one time. This is like every time, for the past month! Occasionally she’ll tuck in for a few grudging mouthfuls before slinking away, as if to say, for sustenance of life, but nothing more.
The thing is, I buy Meow Mix because she used to love it. But she’s developed a taste for people food, it seems. Specifically, ham and cheese. And my dad’s recipe for chicken braised with maodou (edemame) beans in chili sesame oil, soy sauce, and star anise. Go figure.
I guess at least I don’t have to worry about her getting overweight. (She’s a perfectly healthy weight.)
My cat might be the only feline on the planet who turns up her nose at tuna. My previous cats would tear into the room in full cardiac arrest just hearing the tuna can being opened.
Yet she loves butter and chocolate, and will try to steal them any chance she gets.
Eh, cats seem to like one flavor until they burn out on it and stop eating it. I change up foods regularly and know which kinds of things to stay away from (never had a cat who liked Tuna, only one liked Beef).
Right now mine are getting either Beyond chicken or whitefish, depending on the day.
I only recently discovered her love of cheese - 18 month aged Emmental cheese, in particular. She has never had an interest in American or Cheddar cheese, or even regular Swiss cheese (as of the Kraft or Finlandia pre-sliced variety).
I had made myself a sandwich of the cheese, deli sliced, straight up with no meat. As usual when I open the deli drawer in our fridge, she came over and did the purring and head-butting thing, interested in what I was eating. “No, cat, it isn’t ham this time,” I said, but she persisted, as I sometimes spoil her by feeding her strips of ham sticking out of my sandwich as I eat it. So I tore off a piece of the Emmental and waved it under her nose. “See? Just cheese.”
She sniffed at it, vigorously batted it out of my hand with her paw, pounced on it and devoured it, gave a little yowl I would almost describe as orgasmic, and started leaping up at my sandwich, meowing eagerly.
Oh. My. God.
I don’t think there’s anything pathological going on here - just ordinary cat flakiness. She will eat it normally at times, but it seems she’s trying to Make A Point about What She Likes To Eat and What She Will Eat To Stay Alive.
For example, I used to give her wet cat food a few times a week. Fancy Feast, the tuna and salmon one, or maybe the chicken and liver one. She’d eat that very happily. Then one day I gave her Fancy Feast “Gravy Lovers”. She now turns up her nose at Fancy Feast Classic, taking a few bites from time to time, to make it clear: “next time, remember the gravy!”. And since unlike dry food I can’t leave that out for her to come back and nibble on some more later, I’ve stopped buying it.
Meow Mix is pretty low quality cat food, despite what their advertising department would have you believe. First ingredient is ground corn meal, and much of the protein content is vegetable sourced - corn gluten meal and soy protein. If I was an obligate carnivore, like a cat, I’d be turning my nose up at it, too, and hoping for something better.
I’ve got a very finicky 15 year old female named Remy. She will only eat wet food. She started getting picky several months ago and would eat one flavor for a week or so and then refuse it. It eventually got down to one flavor every couple days. So I tried different flavors to appease her and sometimes it would take opening 2 or 3 cans to find something she would eat. I took her to the vet to make sure she was healthy and she is. Lately it’s gotten down to one flavor for a couple meals. I’ve got around 24 different cans of food on my kitchen table. Last week she was refusing pretty much everything. She would eat a couple spoonfuls and that was it. Then I found something new. Friskies Lamb in Clam Sauce. She went crazy for it. Ate the whole can. And, of course, it was the only can the grocery store had. I went to 3 different stores trying to find it and eventually found some at PetCo. I bought the 16 cans they had. She is still eating it 2 days later so maybe I’ve hit on something.
Then there’s the matter of all the leftover food I’ve had in this time. It goes to the outside neighbor kitties who have decided they love me and want me to be their mommy. But that’s a whole other story.
Is it the smelliest flavor? They just love the stinky stuff, for my Stretch it was anything w/ shrimp and though it’s great when fresh, canned shrimp smells disgusting to me.
I’ve found that adding hot water to the dry food to just over the level of food and leaving it till it’s soaked makes it more palatable to cats. Your cat mileage may vary, but it’s worth a try.
It’s not as smelly as the fishy stuff (she really liked whitefish and sardines for a while) but I think it’s just something totally different. I’ve never seen lamb in a cat food before (and while I was searching for this one, I checked every brand in the stores to see if lamb was in one). Or maybe it’s the clam sauce. But I’ve never seen her go for one like she does this. Actually, I’m going to see if she will eat something different tonight - she was eating turkey with gravy previously - so she doesn’t get burned out. If I can swap those two for a while, I’ll be happy. Trying to find something new every day was stressing me out.
And if anyone wonders, it’s really not a matter of just put something out and she will eventually get hungry enough to eat it, as friends have tried to tell me. Been there, done that. She will not. So she’s 15 years old. I’m going to do what I have to to make her life good.
Friskies Cat Concoctions, that’s a new one on me. Luckily, Amazon carries the whole range of what look like disgusting flavors that I’m sure cats will love!
The only way I could ever get my cats to eat a flavor hey didn’t like was to put it out just before I went to bed and w/ no other food out. (I keep my bedroom door closed, too, so no one could complain to my sleeping face.) But that’s w/ multiple cats who can feel food competition; a single cat may just sit and be hungry and stubborn, knowing they can wait you out.
Congrats on your happy 15 year-old; mine made it to 19 and 20 respectively, bless their furry hearts. I spoiled the heck out of them their last 5-6 years.
Maggie has the strangest appetite on the planet. She won’t touch dry cat food – I mean, it might as well not be food as far as she’s concerned. Her favorite food? French fries. If she sees me eating them, she goes nuts. She’ll try to grab them off my plate, and once she stuck her head in a bag of frozen ones when my back was turned.
She also likes donuts, to the point that she’s chewed through bags to get to them. :rolleyes:
Please watch giving your cat chocolate – it’s not quite as bad for them as it for dogs, but it’s still not something cats should be eating.
I am of the belief that my cat and my son have related taste in food. He likes gas station food and for ages turned his nose up at anything resembling good food (he’s been on a health kick for a year and its done wonders for his diet - three meals a day - one of oatmeal, two lean protein and vegetables - and then a snack of hot cheetos or something similarly disgusting from the gas station). She turns her nose up at quality cat food, but loves Meow Mix.
Both my son’s doctor and the vet said “yeah, don’t worry about it.”
My cat has a dry-food-only policy despite my efforts and it took me a while to find something with decent enough ingredients/nutrition that he also approved of. I think I’ve plugged it a couple times on here, but Walmart’s private label “Pure Balance” brand is how we reached a consensus and now he’s a much healthier weight, no urinary problems, and has got a nice shiny coat of hair that doesn’t shed like crazy. He turned his nose up at foods three or four times the cost, so we’re both pretty happy with his choice.
I haven’t priced it out, but I bet Meow Mix is actually more expensive, particularly when you consider how much more of it your cat will need to eat to derive the amount of protein it needs.
Ground Yellow Corn, Corn Gluten Meal, Chicken By-Product Meal, Soybean Meal, Beef Tallow (Preserved With Mixed Tocopherols), Animal Digest, Calcium Carbonate, Turkey By-Product Meal, Salmon Meal, Ocean Fish Meal, Phosphoric Acid, Choline Chloride, Salt, Potassium Chloride, Titanium Dioxide (Color), Vitamins [Vitamin E …
You have a very smart cat ! There is no real meat in the food it all by product .
Yeah, Cat Concoctions. Remy also liked Cod with Bacon Sauce a few times. Amazon was going to be my next move if I couldn’t find the lamb anywhere else.
I actually have two other cats who don’t like wet food. Hence putting the leftovers out for the neighbor kitties.
The last two cats I had lived to be 21 and 20. So I’m hoping for several more years with Remy. My other two are younger - 4 and 12 - and so far no finicky problems from them.
Amazon was going to be my next move if I couldn’t find the lamb anywhere else.