This is a little cat food tip. It is about how to save money on cat food. I wasn’t sure whether to write about it because it may not apply to that many cats. However, I believe it does apply to most cats who eat wet food (all cats should eat wet food as a routine).

Cats almost always leave food in the bowl. If you feed him wet food and put down a full pouch (or sachet) of food, he’ll eat about 2/3rds to 3/4 if you’re lucky and if he wants more he’ll look up to you and ask. This is strange because there is more in the bowl.
If you are not around when he eats he’ll leave about a quarter left in the bowl for it to go off. It doesn’t matter if you put a smaller amount down; he’ll always leave some.
I think cats leave some wet cat food in the bowl because:
- They can’t see the small amount that is left because cats are long-sighted. They rely on smell at close range. And:
- They can’t smell what remains so well because all the smelly bits of the food (the jelly and gravy) has been licked off and eaten.
However, there will be some smelly bits underneath the cardboard, tasteless lumps that are left in the bowl and presented to your cat.
What I do to get over this is to take the bowl from him and take it to where I prepare the cat food. Using a spoon I turn over the remaining cat food in the bowl. Basically, I stir it up and make sure some of smelly/tasty jelly presents itself to him again.
I then pretend I am giving him a fresh bowl of cat food. He invariable eats the food. Bearing in mind that everything in Britain costs 20% more than any other industrialised nation for various spurious reasons such as transport cost etc., if you can save one quarter of your wet cat food supply, it will equate to about £1 per box of 12 sachets. It is like getting a £1 discount on a £4 box of cat food.
It also helps to relieve the waste disposal services of having to deal with maggot ridden cat food waste in trash bins (dust bins in the UK).
Finally, what little food that is left, I leave out at night for the urban foxes of London. All of it is eaten. The bowls are so clean I can put them straight into the dishwasher. If a fox leaves some, a magpie or a slug will finish it.
I believe that is a very efficient way to deal with cat food overall. I was taught to eat everything that is on the plate.
In modern society apparently half of all food purchased for human consumption is thrown away. That is billions of pounds of perfectly good food, while children are starving in less advantageous parts of the world. We’ve become very careless consumers.
Our boyz waste quite a lot of food, it wasn’t so bad when we had the 15 cats next door as they would eat anything up, we know now some days they would have only had dry food if we hadn’t been sending so much round.
Anyway, our boyz usually eat most of a sachet between them but they will never go back to the same food later, we’ve tried giving smaller portions and then the rest later, but they are two wise (spoiled soft) felines and say ‘Hey we had that earlier, how would you like the same meal twice in a day?’ lol
I had to laugh Michael, you not only feed the foxes but magpies and slugs lol some people might hate you as a neighbour but I’d love to live next door to such a kind man!
The best of luck with it. Pretend it is a fresh batch and make sure the jelly is on the top. Should work.
I agree cats do watch food coming out of the pack. What I describe won’t work for some cats but the basic methodology is to pretend that you are getting out new food so the whole routine starts off again. And because it is flipped over the food smells better and looks fresher. That is the idea! It certainly works for Charlie. He might not finish it completely but he will eat quite a lot more of the same sachet.
I can see that you have developed similar ideas yourself. I think we have to because cat food is so damned expensive and I don’t like to see waste.