Oh, my… the implication is that the cat is up and walking about on top of the…<hooooork> the…<hoork>… I suppose you can’t keep them out of anywhere, can you?
My take on it is that their taste is so diffferent then ours, dairy to them is like desert to us.
I don’t think there’s anything genetic about it–I think they just like the kinds of food they were raised on. I have five cats, and when I put down a bowl of milk, they gathered around, took a few little drinks, and left. Maybe half a cup of milk in the bowl, and they barely drank any of it.
When I empty an ice-cream container, I set it on the floor. The cats check it out and leave, and the dogs lick it clean.
Two of the five cats will eat cheese. The other three won’t.
And, Mangetout, I agree with you about “sharing” with the cats. But you should have seen my daughter alternating bites of an apple with her horse. Or alternating licks of an ice cream cone with her dog. And that’s as a teenager! Yech.
I like cats (we have four) – I’ll even share with cats, as long as the portion they’re eating is nowhere near the portion I’m eating. The wife, however, has been known to share on a more intimate basis. <hrrrmmmk>
My cats love milk. They’ll lick at ice cream, but won’t go nuts for it. None of them care much for cheese or sour cream.
Milk seems to be the grand unifier here; everything else is either by extension (dairy products) or left to the individual feline’s tastes (ear wax??)
WRT cats and fish however – the thing I find odd about their innate attraction to fish is that, given the choice, every cat I’ve ever met will take fish over absolutely anything else, and in particular will take tuna or salmon over other fish. Such is their mania for piscine fare that one would think it was the main diet of their ancestors. My cats will hardly touch anything other than fish – they might peck at chicken or a piece of beef, but those might as well rot as long as fish is around.
See, my cats are the exact opposite–they will OCCASIONALLY eat tuna fresh from a can, but any fish-flavored cat foods are snubbed in favor of poultry-flavored ones.
And they hate milk but one of them adores cheese. And hot sauce. I could put a plate of fresh salmon in the middle of the floor and she’d ignore it, but god help you if you’ve got a chicken taco in my house.
We had a cat that loved ice cream. Any time I had it she wanted it. Our other cat wasn’t very interested, but now that she’s older, she’s addicted too. As soon as she sees or smells it, she wants her cut.
One cat also loves vaseline (helps with hairballs. And don’t tell me I shouldn’t let her eat it – it’s in the hairball remedies), corn on the cob (she’ll beg for it when we start husking corn), and marshmallows. She’ll lick the cheese off macaroni and cheese.
One of our cats has a fetish for plain cake donuts. To a lesser degree, nearly any cake/cookie product.
This is on top of the seafood/chicken/beef addictions.
Since when dealing with cats, the plural of datum is anecdote:
Our two fuzzbutts can’t stand fish. Turn up their noses at fishy treats. Only Pixel has any interest in dairy, and that is limited to the occasional lick at my ice cream. But they both like pickle juice, and dive for the cutting board if I have sliced a few for dinner.
My fuzzballs are strangely attracted to wine and coffee. When they notice there’s some around they insist on sticking their snouts in for a taste. Oddly, I always get the impression that they don’t actually like what they taste. Maybe they are just doing that ‘I can’t believe it tastes that bad! Gimme another go.’ thing.
(I used to keep a glass of water by the side of the bed at night. I did until I woke up to the sound of lapping. I have no idea why fuzzball one needs to drink out of a glass rather than her bowl but I put it down to the same reason that she has to steal cat biscuits from the bag rather than her dish. Still haven’t worked out why water in the showerpan tastes better but I’m used to standing in catspit to get clean now so it’s no biggie :P)
Figured my cat was unique.
MK (Micro-kitty, named when he was about 1.5 ounces and being fed Kitten Milk Replacement and not expected to survive) was observed to bound over to Donna’s forgotten coffee cup and lower his head and drink from it. We laughed and I said “Well, I suspect my coffee is safe. You put milk and sugar in yours but mine is plain black”.
Cat comes over, sniffs my cup, then AHA COFFEE! shoves head and shoulders deep into cup and goes lap, lap, lap, lap, lap…
When I was in high school, we had a cat who could hear you slicing cheese downstairs at the refrigerator. Open refrigerator door. No cat to be seen. Take down tupperware cheese box and open it. No cat. Take down knife from knife rack. No cat. Slice a bit off…
from upstairs: <thump> <tump tump tump tump>
down the stairs: <pomp pomp pomp pomp pomp>
across living room: <tump tump tump>
and into kitchen on vinyl: <tap tap tap>
MIAOW?!
That cat would stand on rear legs and extent front paws & claws and rake at any cheese. Would follow cheese backwards to the point of doing a full backflip. Would insert a claw or two into back of hand and firmly lower hand to remove cheese. And would inhale the stuff, would eat it faster than you could slice it.
But the coffee-drinking cat always seemed weirder than the cheese cat.
This seems like a promising theory, which then raises the question: why have cats and dairy become so linked in our culture? Was milk just something convenient to feed kitties once they were domesticated, so became the diet staple of choice?
And why don’t dogs have a single category that’s as popularly associated with them? Less picky eaters? Or do bones count?
I’m not sure if my cats like dairy products, because I’ve never given them any. They have sensitive stomachs and a tendency to get diarrhea when they eat something weird, so I try to limit new and/or hard-to-digest foods. They do go nuts over Marmite, Petromalt (flavored with malt, looks and smells like Marmite), and earwax, and will absolutely flip out over Chinese food or anything cooked with soy sauce – I have to lock them in the other room in order to have a chance of finishing my meal.
And I admit to sharing with my cats – they happily sit on the kitchen counters, one of them likes to lick lips, and I’ve trained them to give me a kiss on the lips when I make kissy noises. They can drink out of my water glass anytime – I’ve learned to check for stray hairs before taking a swig.
And quite gleefully, too. Ours are always licking their asses in public. Plus they have bad breath. Why would you want to share your food with a cat?
It could be the mice/cheese relation at work. We associate cats with milk because the stereotype is that all cats like milk – and probably most cats do, but it may not be a genetic trait. As has been detailed here, many people have cats that will eat the oddest things.
I have one cat that absolutely loves licking the adhesive off of packing tape. You can tell she’s doing it from anywhere in the house by the telltale Shhhhk! Shhhhk! Shhhhk! sound.
I have another cat that has to sample everything. Leather chair arms. Drapery. Window ledges. Just one small lick, mind you. Enough to apparently inform her that paint has no flavour. At least, not this brand of paint.
<sigh> Ok I realize lots of people think it’s gross but she’s my baby and my best friend! It just doesn’t bother me. And Felicity’s breath doesn’t stink. And I haven’t ever gotten sick or died yet (or ever heard of anyone who has) so…
Besides, isn’t it the case that cat and dog mouths are cleaner than human mouths? I share everything with my boyfriend too so maybe it’s just that if you love them, you don’t mind eating after them.
[QUOTE=nyctea scandiacaBesides, isn’t it the case that cat and dog mouths are cleaner than human mouths?[/QUOTE]
This is a myth.
Besides, what does it matter either way? I’ve heard that the interior of the toilet bowl is not one of the germier surfaces in the house. That doesn’t mean I want to lick it.
Hi I’m new
As for cats, mine dont like milk, but one of them will try to lick the floor if I have washed it with bleach, then he will roll in it, I guess it must be the ammonia smell he’s going for…
the other one likes to lick aftershave off my bloke, and nibble his feet after hes had boots on all day, one wierd cat.
Something to keep in mind if you want to have children, nyctea scandiaca. I’d think that by drinking after a cat, you’d be taking a risk of contracting that sickness. I personally wouldn’t take such a risk myself.
But the only time toxoplasmosis could affect childbearing is during pregnancy, not before. If she gets toxoplasmosis before becoming pregnant, it won’t affect any future children at all. And when you’re pregnant, it only matters if you get toxoplasmosis if you’ve never had it before. So she’d only have to worry about drinking after a cat while she was pregnant or trying to conceive.
It makes a difference to the toxoplasmosis risk whether the cat is an indoor or outdoor cat, as well as what the cat eats. An indoor cat fed only cat food and bites of cooked human food is not a risk for toxoplasmosis. She’d be much more likely to get toxoplasmosis from gardening, or from handling raw meat.