Cat Rules For Eating
Cat Rules For Eating
by Mewsette
Okay, stop giggling, I know perfectly well there are no such things asRules that can possibly apply to us cats. These are secret "Rules" about accepting (or not) our food, that I am passing on to you. They have nothing to do with whether or not a food is good. This only concerns getting our own way.
Dry food is easy
We should all know the basic rules of dry kibble:
Cats like what isn't good for us, but we like what is very expensive, too. I go with the expensive Premium kind, and it's cheaper than extra visits to the vet in the long run. There shouldn't be many problems about dry kibble, but somehow there are.
If we're the only cat in the house, it's our choice whether we eat it or hold out for something better. But with more than one cat, we are what is referred to as a multi-cat household. Everything's fine if everybody eats - or doesn't eat - the same thing. But we get older. Somehow, I'm not sure why, older cats have "different needs". Do you think for one minute that the older cats in the same multi-cat house are going to have the same "different needs"? Ha.
You may have one er, full figured kitty who needs Senior or Low-cal, one picky eater who's all fur and bones and needs Regular and rich, and one little bitty who wants tiny kibble she can get in her tiny mouth or should have anti-furball food but hates it. All in the same house. I did.
The only way to deal with 3 cats eating 3 different things in 3 different rooms, 2 of them on tables so the third, who can't jump higher than her ears any more, can't scarf theirs down instead of her own low-cal, is a Rule we developed ourselves: "I'll eat yours if I can get at it but if I can't, I'll eat mine." See? Dry is easy.
Canned food is hard.
As far as canned foods go, there are just too many of them. They did that to confuse our humans. I've devised a scale of 1 to 10 which you
may find helpful. I left out unimportant numbers. We can do that. The point is to accept or reject, love or hate a canned food in direct
proportion to how hard it was for our humans to find and how much of it they bought. Cost rarely enters into it, because the main requirement for good canned cat food is that it cost more per ounce than prime rib.
Here are some random examples of the scale, which I suspect all cats are aware of. But this might help you decide. Remember, it's important to keep up our reputation for being finicky! Just to keep them guessing, you might even want to reverse the scale to suit yourself.
If your human traveled 110 miles round trip from the boonies to civilization to get us premium food, giving up her only day off all week to do it, on a scale of 1 to 10 whatever she brings home is a 1.
If she drove 17 miles in pouring rain to a vet's office who carries premium food we like, but arrived the day before the delivery truck when they only had 2 cans left at $1.00 a can, it's a 2.
If she braved icy city streets in heavy sleet to get to a pet supply store and got the last few cans of our current favorite before spinning out in the parking lot in the dark, it's a 3.
If she made out like a bandit at a cat show and got free cases of a premium brand we love, it used to be a 10, but now it's a 1.
If she stocked up on a sunny day at a pet store right across the street from where she was anyway, and our current favorite was on sale, it used to be a 9. But it just went down to 2.
In general: If she got a whole case of our number 1 favorite and only 2 cans of our number 2 favorite, number 2 becomes number 1 immediately and number 1 becomes garbage.
You can see the high end of the scale isn't used much. We've got our pride. But these might be a 10:
One tiny can of a new flavor she didn't know if we'd like. We love it and that's the only kind we want now. As long as she bought it far, far away, or can't remember where she found it, it's a 10.
A small free sample in the mail of a new cat treat, that's actually healthy but cannot be purchased within 400 miles, is a 10.
Otherwise, the only 10s we ever had around my house are the first sardine out of the tin (not the rest) or freshly minced raw steak, served bleeding. Those are just mine. (I was the all-fur-and-bones one.) My sisfur doesn't have any 10s.
The one hard and fast rule: If a particular brand or flavor is discontinued by the manufacturer, it's gone, disappeared, bye-bye, that's the only thing you want to eat now and for the rest of your life.
So all we need to remember about Rules is: