Dear George,This food business is odd. Why do humans put stuff like soya and ash in our catfood. Havew you read those labels... enough to make a self respecting cat decide never to eat anything but fresh mouse again. Humans tin sardines - quite nice for cats especially the ones in tomato sauce. But why don't they just tin mice for us. And dry them. I'd love to eat dried mice. Like dipping into a box of chocolates for humans - they could vary the flavours - field mice, house mice, yellow-eared mice, young black rat etc. And a bag of dried mice tails would be fun too.
Rocky
Dear Rocky,
Humans are sometimes difficult to understand. The odd thing is that they do feed mice, admittedly thawed out frozen ones, to their snakes. You can buy them in pet shops,labelled pinkies (very young indeed), or fuzzies (a bit older). They also sell turkey poults and chicks for these reptiles - dead not alive. It is against human law to sell live food to reptiles or indeed even to other humans. They even grind up mice to make snake sausages.
So why don't they feed this to us? My human, Celia, once used some fuzzies to get an anorexic cat eating again. They worked fine. Fat Mog sprang to life when offered one. No more refusing to eat. So why no tinned mice - with all the bones and hair and even the tail inside the tin. I'd like to nose around the tinned contents looking for the crunchy tail. It is one of my favourite pieces of mouse!
I am glad to see you other cats are keeping firm on this question of food (see comments below on the last blog), though I am slightly worried about Oscar Snuggles eating cat fish. Is this some form of cannibalism? Should he encourage his humans to stock it. After all it would only be a small step from cat fish to cat! Watch it, Oscar! And I am pleased to see that Libby and Smudge hold out for good food - particularly the Tesco sausages with onion gravy, Libby. Only don't eat too much of the onions - they can be toxic for us cats in big quantities. .
Instead of tinned mice, we get tinned mush made out of the bits left over from human use - meat scraped off the bone, chicken wings ground up, that sort of thing. Then they add carbohydrate like corn and wheat and soya. Ever seen a cat in the wild stopped to browse in a what field? Of course not. They even add veg - and then colour the extruded kibble with bright colours like sunset yellow. Incidentally this has been phased out for human kittens in the Uk so refuse any pet food which contains it. Why should cats kittens be fed additives that are unsuitable for human kittens.
I agree with Wicky Wuddler about prescription foods. Keeling over on your side, as a protest, is awesome! Magnficent bit of human training, Wicky. Actually I rather like the prescription foods I have been offered, but I enjoy seeing my human worry when I refuse to eat them. It's just fun to wind them up. The only ones I eat willingly are the huge crunchy ones I get fed as treats to keep my teeth clean. Celia says they are better than fatty old cat treats and I like them just as much.
Incidentally did any of you cats see Tom Cox's cats (http://littlecatdiaries.blogspot.com) eating in a line. It was in the Times. I bet he kept them hungry so that they would do it for the photographer! It's publicity for his book 'Under the Paw; Confessions of a Cat Man." Shame on you, Tom's cats! Stop being so nice to him. Remember, it is every cat's duty to keep its human under control.
George
PS. Celia is back at college - the oldest animal behaviour student on the block. So no blogging for a bit. She's left me in charge but without the secretarial help.
you can buy freeze-dried mouse treats for cats you know...100% pure mouse, ground up and shaped into rounds.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.petextras.com/pofdmo21gr.html
in the UK pet food is meant to be fit for human consumption...this stems from the war when it was thought things might get desperate on the food front...so it was decreed that pet food should be edible for Beans too...hence no tinned mice. not sure my Meowmie would tuck into a tin of Whiskers though...
my Meowmie has a pot of jellied eels in the fridge, in readiness for the next time I go off my food...she will try and tempt me with anything!!!
xxx
I can't believe Celia wouldn't provide a secretary for you! Of all the nerve! As for the food issue, my human gives me sardines packed in water from time to time. They HATE the smell, but I LOVE it. I just don't like the spine, so I just don't eat that part. As for the cat fish, they are these dark gray fish with these wisker looking fins at each side of their mouth. If the stick you with those fins it is very painful. My female human does not like fish, but does eat salmon. She was going to try the cat fish because they were processed and packaged in the US where the standards are much higher than in China or other countries. She just couldn't get past the fact they are scavenger fish, so I got the cat fish. Yum. I loved them. I also like the salmon. They bought some fresh salmon that wasn't so fresh and because it had a fishy smell and taste I got the whole lot. I ate salmon for several days. My humans do try to feed me quality food, but I'm down to my skinny summer weight and that greatly disturbs them, so I get to eat anytime I want. I got a bit of their scrambled eggs this morning. It was so delicious. They were eating out on the patio and it made it very convenient for me to just hop right up on the table and just force the issue of getting a bite of their breakfast. We cats must use any method necessary to get the food we want. As for the mice, I manage to find fresh meat most days. I especially like baby rabbits. My human had a fit this morning when they discovered one in the path to the workshop that I didn't finish. Oh well. They'll get over it. After all, I am King of Tidewater.
ReplyDeleteGeorge I am so pleased you are addressing this important issue for we cats. Although I grudgingly eat the repulsive rubbish (er, high quality prescription food) that I am served, I regularly go out and kill a mole and ensure that I play with it and eat it, infront of the sitting room window, so the humans notice that I am having to supplement my diet myself. Life really is hard work.
ReplyDeleteIf you polled only cats, I believe you'd get a very positive response on this idea, George. However I think most humans would go "Ewwwww" at the thought of opening a tin and seeing mice nicely lined up like sardines.
ReplyDeleteIf you intend on taking this idea to market though, I can arrange to ship you all the dead mice Mom finds in our basement. With 4 of us here, our kill rate is 100%!! Since we're well fed, we're not hungry so we never eat them. I'd be happy to donate them to a needy, mouseless cat.
George