Cats are fussy eaters - prone to turn-up their furry noses at even sachet-treats of expensive, exotically flavoured food (beef and liver, poultry and lamb... mmm!). What a waste!
So, why don't cat food manufacturers actually make (or, at least flavour) their product with the things cats actually like to eat? Mice, spiders, pigeons, grass, bluebottles, mashed banana, little bits of debris lying on the floor?
The problem is that the makers are trying to appeal to humans - not to cats; on the basis of "who actually buys the stuff?" So we get claims the food contains the kind of meat that people enjoy.
A deeper consideration reveals that the proper question to ask is: "But who controls the purse-strings in a cat-inhabited house?"
That query has a very different answer.
6 comments:
Lizard flavour for ours
I once rented a flat above a restaurant. I had the occasional mouse problem. Mouse-traps in cartoons are always baited with cheese, but I was advised to try cocktail sausages or small squares of chocolate --- which mice are actually tempted by. Success!
I'd add that a senior executive at a petfood company once told me that 20 per cent of petfood was consumed by humans.
@wa - Philip K Dick famously used to eat minced horsemeat from a pet shop:
https://www.pkdickbooks.com/pkdworld.html
...although one of his friends believed that PKD probably did this not so much to save money, but as a combination of self-dramatic wallowing in misery, and to tell the story about it later.
I found very quick cats don't like beef. They like chicken, turkey, and salmon and tuna. They really do like chicken. I've seen one of my cats trying to catch his own chickens. His mother who came up as a feral loves catching lizards and squirrels. Saw her eat a whole squirrel in one sitting, even the head leaving only the skull behind. They kill mice but never eat them.
Manufacturers should replace beef with suirrel. But the real reason they use beef, chicken, etc. is they use the parts humans don't want to eat. They use the leftovers from production for humans.
Cats enjoy mashed bananas? If so that's news to me.
@EP - ...Mixed with clotted cream (left-over dessert, licking bowl) - but neither Bs nor CC alone.
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