Are you hungry?

Today, my husband wrote his blog about food. I worked at Kroger today and spent all day putting food in bags, putting back food that people either returned or decided not to buy. When I got home, I fed the cats some chicken canned cat food that they decided to eat some of. They eat mostly the dry food but get canned food each night around 9 PM. Before I feed them, I say "Are you hungry?" and they come running, most of the time, not always. They are picky eaters, they don't like the Friskies Salmon, 'Mariner's Catch,' Liver and recently decided that ' Mixed Grill' was not suitable for them to eat. They ate it the week before but suddenly decided not to eat it anymore.

The one exception is Sprinkles. She has the best appetite of all of our cats. She is also the smallest of all of our cats. After the cats have eaten what they are going to eat, we place the unfinished food plates up on the microwave cart to keep the dog from eating it and Sprinkles usually finishes it off. If she finds it unsuitable, she tries to bury it. The microwave cart actually had a microwave on it in our old house in Arlington but when we moved to this house in McKinney, there was no electrical outlet in the only place the cart would fit, so it became more of a cat cart. It comes in handy because the cats can hop up there and eat their food without the dog polishing it off.

Sprinkles

As my husband pointed out in his blog today, some people can be real fancy about the kind of food they prepare and eat, but they can't be any more particular than the average house cat. People have fancy tastes when it comes to wine and cheese but cats seem to have an even more sensitive palate. Sometimes when we place a plate of food in front of our cats, they will look at us and that stuff we put on their plates as if we committed a serious error, as if we offered 'Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill' or 'Reunite' at a  fancy wine tasting party. Then, they'll walk away without even touching the food. What's worse is that sometimes one or more of them will rub their paws over the entire plate like they are trying to bury it.  The funny thing is that the food they were horrified with could be exactly the same thing they gobbled up with enthusiasm last week. Their tastes are totally unpredictable and it doesn't necessarily have to be the priciest thing on the shelf.  There's a brand called 'Science Diet' that is very expensive and supposed to be very healthy for the cats, but ours won't even look at that stuff.  Often, I will see people staring at the cat food section of the store trying to decide what their cat or cats will eat. I have done the same thing. Fancy Feast is supposed to be pretty good stuff and it is more pricey than the standard stuff and I've seen Tippi, Tiger and Yukki look at it, snub their noses at it and walk away. It depends on what flavor it is and what day it is.

Peppermint

Kroger doesn't carry our cats' favorite, Friskies 'Tuna and Egg' and they stopped carrying the Friskies Tuna, so I have to go to either Petsmart or Walmart to get that. It gets a little crazy when you have to go to several different stores to get something your cats will actually eat. Ming, my mother-in-law's cat would eat nothing but 'Meow Mix' dry cat food. Ming wouldn't even touch canned cat food. My mother's cat, Cindy Lou, would only eat canned tuna, which isn't properly balanced  for cats so she had to add vitamins to it. Our calico cat, Tippi, prefers to eat the dry food. She'll eat a few nibbles of the canned food we offer her, but she mostly eats the dry food. All of our cats seem to enjoy Nine Lives dry food and Kroger sells a big bag of it that will last us for a while. We keep dry food out all of the time on the microwave cart so the cats can come and go and eat at their leisure. I remember a dry cat food that came out in the late 1960's called 'Milkit.' It came in a container shaped like a milk carton. The cat I had at the time, a huge tabby cat named 'Tiger' that I rescued. would eat it occasionally after we first rescued him, but eventually totally turned it down. Milk is actually not good for adult cats, it gives them mild digestive trouble so it not recommended and Milkit didn't stay on the market very long.

 What cats will and will not eat gets complicated when there is more than one cat in the household. There are somethings Peppermint likes that the other cats can't stand. Sprinkles likes nearly everything, but tries to bury 'Mariner's Catch.' All of the cats don't like that one.  I don't even bother buying it any more. Sometimes Yukki, Tiger and Snuffy will eat something and Tippi will turn her nose up at it. Sometimes, it's hard to know what to select when picking out cat food. Peppermint seems to like the shredded beef, but I don't think Yukki likes it and am not sure about the other cats. I've never had a cat that liked liver, ever, and I've had a number of different cats.

My husband and I got a food processor for a wedding gift. It was a nice one with a lot of attachments. The only thing was that it and its' parts were not dishwasher safe. It was complex and had lots of little parts. Needless to say, with my working full-time, it didn't get used much. Actually, it got used only once. A gray half-Siamese cat we had, also named 'Tiger', developed kidney trouble. The vet recommended a special diet that his kidneys would handle better than regular cat food. It was an expensive brand that could only be bought at the vet's office. Of course Tiger turned it down and then would meow at us to feed him something else. The vet gave us a recipe for a home made cat food. It involved liver so I had a bad feeling about it, but at this point was willing to try anything. I prepared up this gourmet mix of liver, rice and a few other ingredients and blended it in the food processor. Following this, I cleaned up the big mess and washed the various parts of the food processor. Then I presented it to Tiger and he didn't even sniff it. He just looked at it, walked away and meowed for us to feed him. Eventually, he did pick at the prescription cat food, but he wasn't happy about it. He never did touch the home made stuff I fixed for him. I still miss him sometimes, he had a lot of personality. Peppermint reminds me of him in some ways, but she is sweeter and more laid back.

Tiger

We used to feed Iams canned cat food to our cats until Bo, a blue-point Siamese mix we had turned it down and would never touch it again. If we served it to him, he would look at it, then meow for us to feed him. That's when I stopped buying the Iams cat food and started buying the Friskies. Bo liked Friskies canned cat food. Shortly after that, there was a huge recall of a number of national brands of canned cat foods. They were making cats really, really sick. I think some cats even died from it. Iams canned cat food was one of them. Fortunately, Friskies was not included in the recall. That was one time that a picky cat saved us and our cats a lot of trouble and heartbreak.

Tomorrow night, your guess is as good as mine as to whether or not they'll like what they get fed. They'll probably get Tuna and Egg, so chances are that they'll eat it, I hope.