Well, this video is about people who are scared of cats or who don’t like them. They find out over the course of a week that cats can be charming and great companions. All of them were won over.
BUT for me the interesting episode in the video is the flat-faced Persian eating from a conventional bowl. It is a horrible mess as he/she has to stuff their face into the bowl. His face ends up covered in wet, soggy food and gravy because he hasn’t got a muzzle.
In order to get food into his mouth he has to place his entire face against the food. Normally a cat only has to place their muzzle near the food and then open their mouths. For the normal cat the face except the end of the muzzle is at a distance from the food. Not so with the Persian and Exotic Shorthair.
Check out the video to see what I mean. It starts where the Persian is eating. You can then go back to the beginning if you wish to see how these ladies get on with cats for the first time.
A Persian cat owner describes the problem on a forum website.
My new Persian has a very flat face and a very hard time eating from a regular bowl. I’ve also tried a saucer and a whisker relief bowl. These made it worse. He pretty much can only eat if the food is piled up in a bowl so that he can eat from the food on top.
The solution seems to be to:
- Use a flat plate and not a cat food bowl to remove the sides of the bowl and
- Pile the wet cat food into a pyramid shape. This in effect compensates for a lack of muzzle.
This is exclusively a Persian cat and Exotic Shorthair cat (shorthaired version of the longhaired Persian) problem. I had never thought about it before but it obvious when you think about it. It is another negative spin-off from the extreme breeding of this once very attractive cat breed (doll-faced Persian).
There are many other problems, all to do with health. When breeders under the guidance of the cat associations go off the rails and breed inherently unhealthy cats due to distortions in their anatomy from years of artificial breeding you get all kinds of problems, some unforeseen. This is one of them.
Unless the cat caregiver feeds a Persian as described their face will need wet wiping after each wet feed. FYI, don’t throw the wet wipe down the toilet as they block sewers. Another negative spin-off I am afraid.
