Lately, I’ve been spoon-feeding my ninety year old mom applesauce in the mornings before I go to work. It helps with getting her to swallow her medication.
Now my fifteen year old cat Tallulah has discovered this wonderful new taste treat, and clambers all over my mom and myself trying to get her share of applesauce. I let her lick up some of it from the same cup because I figure any germs she has, my mom and I probably have too.
I’m surprised though. I thought cats couldn’t taste sweet things. I’ve tasted the applesauce, and other than a slight apple-y tang, the only thing I taste is sweet, extremely sweet.
I’ve had some cats with a fondness for yogurt or ice cream, but I always thought that was because cats like milk.
Is Tallulah enjoying the sweetness of the applesauce? She doesn’t usually beg for food, or want to eat something just because she sees a human eating it.
Or are scientists wrong about cats being able to taste sweet things, like they were wrong about them seeing colors?
I used to have a cat that absolutely doted on cashew nuts. I don’t care where she would be in the house, when she heard that lid on the jar being unscrewed, she would trample anyone in her way to get there.
The other night I let my cat have some salmon remnants off my dinner plate. She ignored the salmon and cleaned up the remaining tartar sauce instead. She also likes BBQ sauce.
I used to give my cats Brewer’s Yeast tablets, a thing many cats adore, and Clemmie a b/w tom went on to yeast, beer-flavoured cheese, and beer.
Sounds like a Hogarthian series of downfall, suitable for Stahl’s ‘Poor Minette’ as illustrated by Grandville.
My cat has no interest in people food. I can leave my full plate on the floor and she’ll sniff, but not touch. Except popcorn. She’s been known to eat a kernel. Weird.
My/Tripler’s cats enjoy fruits of all kinds and a few veggies, especially the sweeter ones; I hadn’t heard cats can’t taste sweet - maybe it’s the smell rather than the taste? One of them will attempt to swipe a strawberry, apricot, cherry or tomato from your hand or mouth if he’s close enough.
Licorice, our wee black moggie, loved marshmallows. She’d snitch them from my wife’s bowl of Lucky Charms cereal as a baby. Later, she discovered full-sized marshmallows and swiped them at every opportunity. Her guilty pleasure, she’d snatch them and run to the basement stairs landing to eat them. (If you went over and watched her, she’d give you a look that meant (as clearly as a thought balloon) “Don’t judge me! <om nom nom>”)
There is literally nothing to a marshmallow other than sweetness, so if cats can’t appreciate that there should be absolutely no attraction.
My Fuzzy, who shuffled off this mortal coil a couple of years ago now, enjoyed Jello Pudding (he was permitted to lick the top when I opened a cup) but he didn’t care for other dairy, so I can only imagine it was the sweetness that he liked.
He generally only liked his cat food (kibble) but in his later years developed a fondness for chicken, which I usually indulged him.
He enjoyed a couple of noodles when I made Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, also. I figured it was the saltiness, on that one.
My other cat has more expected tastes, and is interested in fish and seafood, and not much else.
We have one, Moody by name, who has always loved roses. If you leave one accessible, she’ll shred it. Once we got a whole tray of sample blooms from an antique-rose farm, and found petals over half the house the next morning.
Then one day I cut more rosemary than I needed and tossed an extra sprig on the floor to see how they might like it. One was scared by the smell and started poking it at full arm’s length. The second came along to sniff it, gave me a dirty look, and stomped off. When I put it down again to demonstrate for Zyada, the first cat did the arm’s-length thing again, then Moody came by, sniffed a few times, and settled in to eat it.
One of my cats likes to lick apples. She won’t eat them; however, if I eat an apple, I’ll place the core on the floor (on a towel) and she will lick it until she decides she’s done.
This same cat also likes rubber bands and will put herself into danger to get at them. :rolleyes: I’d rather have her eating apples.
