Your cat eats his cat food without question. He or she gives you the impression that he likes it because he eats it. You decide that he likes his cat food. But does he? Are you sure? How do you know that he likes his food? There is a difference between eating a certain type of cat food and liking the cat food that you are eating.
If a cat is hungry enough he’d like pretty much any sort of food, even food that he’d not normally eat. Also, if a cat was used to being given food that he did not particularly like he’d eat it and accept it when it is the only choice. He’d get used to it and be happy to get it, if the only source was the person giving it to him. When a cat has no choice to accept or reject what is provided (s)he accepts it. That does not make the food tasty or suitable.
You can put cat food down for a cat that he’ll reject but, after several hours, he will accept it. That is to be expected because hunger clicks in. This is an important test on the palatability of cat food.
What is the point of what I have stated? The point is this: we don’t know for sure if our cat finds his commercially manufactured cat food tasty. Could it be more tasty? We don’t know the answer to that either. Here is a fine point: would cats find cat food tasty if it was more natural?
One thing I do know is that my cat prefers human food. He prefers cooked chicken and ham over cat food. He always looks up at the refrigerator when I am about to feed him, which is his signal, his request, for cooked chicken or ham from the fridge.
This indicates to me that the good quality cat food that I buy him is less appetising than human meat. Every cat is an individual. Some cats will be more accepting of commercial cat food. Sometimes a preference for human food will be because of conditioning (a form of training). Once again we are in the dark.
Commercial cat food is tasteless but for the flavoured jelly or gravy that surrounds the “cardboard” protein blocks. It contains preservatives and additives that can cause allergies.
There is a complacency amongst the majority of cat owners in respect of commercial cat food. You have no idea if your cat likes the food. A cat cannot communicate that information to you. Just eating it is not an indication that he likes it.
I would like to see frozen, raw (natural – without preservatives), commercially prepared cat food available at supermarkets to see if cats preferred something more natural.
I am sure that some cat food manufacturers use cats to taste test their products. We have no idea what the outcome is because using cats in laboratories is not good publicity for business.
He does seem to prefer human food, but usually if he gets human food he gets it next to me because we are sitting together and I am eating and I share with him. So does he like it for the taste or because he likes that I shared my food with him? Maybe he likes when we eat together.
He likes his food. Do you think he likes human food more than cat food?
Monty eats the Purrfectly Fish or Purrfectly Chicken as well as Friskies in cans or pouches. He like the Gravy Sensations ones. If Michael is correct that the food itself is flavorless, then extra tasty gravy is a good thing! He purrs for those as well as for some of the fish flavors. And any human food I share with him on the corner of my breakfast tray, even just a little butter for his hair balls will make him purr like crazy. If I share it it’s got to be good, or maybe he just likes eating together.
Red used to purr when he was eating – he’d scarf down his food all the while sounding like a gremlin 🙂
I lived off school lunches and dinners for years and although by comparism I hated the food over normal food – after a couple months of being there I ‘liked’ the food because I was hungry.
I think liking food relates to hunger and is somehow proportionate.
The are certain things I like at certain times and at other times not.
It seems more complicated once you start to analyse.
I think this is what we are better at. We know when a cat does not like his food because he walks away from it. However, he will come back in the end and eat it. We don’t know if a cat is either eating it because he is hungry or because he likes it. A person can tell you what he likes. We have to guess what our cat likes. There is no accurate way of knowing. We can’t be sure unless our cat goes nuts about it, which is what Charlie does with cooked chicken and ham (human food), which tells me he does not like cat food as much.