Not to make them feel included, but to kill their curiosity. I always offer a smell of my food to my cat and then take it away. She gets to smell it and realize it’s something she isn’t interested in. I think that’s the reason she doesn’t bother people while they’re eating. She knows she isn’t interested in “people food.”
Not to make them feel included, but to kill their curiosity.
That’s how she feels included. Even if you don’t mean it that way, that’s how she sees it. She’s important enough that you care what she thinks. That’s good cat parenting.
My last cat was food-obsessed. I would do the "show, sniff, remove" thing and it would work depending on the food. But many foods only needed a fraction of a second for her to know she needed it in her mouth right now. If you took it before her attempt to eat it, you met the response of "hey, I wasn't done with that!" and the paw would come out to bring your hand back.
For roast chicken you would have to actively defend your plate the entire meal. She would sit next to you and very slowly try to "sneak" her paw on to your plate to take what she could. As though I wasn't watching her like a hawk and she had some kind of cloak of invisibility.
we always had to defend the table when we had two cats. They both would steal sausage, ham, cream cheese and butter and one of them would even take cheese and margarine.
i think the only people food they didnt like was purely plant based stuff.
I do this too. But of course some cat like some or most people food more than others. My cat eats ranch dressing, eggs, dairy, and oils. She’ll eat a few meats too. But she is mostly uninterested in human food, so I fulfill her curiosity often because it’s kind to my cat and it helps stave off her desire to beg. I also thinks she just trusts me more and is more fond of me because I engage with her in her interests a lot. Hell, that’s just good advice for raising children too.
For cats it’s important to show them what you have so they can see and smell it, they are much more likely to leave you alone after (unless it’s delicious and they want it).
Our cat was brought up on high protein and indulgence. Everything she wanted to smell, we presented; every sniffable light had a willing Sherpa to get the nose in range. Open the closet door. Added blanket in couch corner arranged for easy use by submarine cat. Toys to carry around.
I do this all the time lol, I feel like it helps the KitKats feel less ignored or whatever. They don’t need attention 24/7, so little things like that can help them bond without requiring lots of time or energy
Meanwhile, one of my parents cats refuses to eat wet food and will taste test it by dipping her paw into it and tasting what is on her paw, then usually decides it isn’t what she likes and yeows for something else. She pretty much only eats Temptations Cat Treats.
Pretty much all the time. Whenever my cat is staring at me and I have something in my hands, if he’s close enough to sniff, I hold it where he can sniff. Doesn’t matter what it is.
If it’s food, and maybe the food is something he is interested in, I can see his expression/posture change, and I pull back and and separate a small, cat-sized bite for him to try, being careful to only give him cat friendly morsels, like a piece of meat or something.
Usually he doesn’t have any interest in what I’m eating, so that’s rare. Most of the time he sniffs, then retreats to a safe distance, uninterested in what I’m having… I just think he’s not sure until he gets a good whiff; so I give him one.
One of mine would pick up mini marshmallows with a claw, lick all the powdered sugar off and then shake her paw to get rid of it, flinging the wet, sticky blob off into the unknown.
My cat has to sniff the can of cat food after I dump it out in her bowl so she can decide if it’s worth the 4 steps it’ll take to get to the bowl. She’s a cat, she can smell the food in her bowl from less than a foot away. But if she doesn’t get to sniff the can, it might as well be poison for all she knows.
My parents have 4 cats, three of them willingly eat the wet food as soon as we put it down. Also, there 3 generations of cats (we started out with a brother and sister as kittens, my parents didn’t get them fixed in time, the brother impregnated the sister, we kept one of the offspring, my dad had a heart attack and we didn’t get to spay her in time and she also had kittens from an unknown suitor). The original female we started with is very picky, when we put down wet food for her and half the time she’s like “fuck this”. Occasionally she’ll dip her paw into it and then taste what’s on her paw to see if it’s worth eating. Cracks me up every time I see it.
I have to show my cats all sorts of stuff, bolts, tools, gamepads, pens. They’re incredibly nosy, not curious, as that kills cats, just nosy and inquisitive.
My cat doesn’t care for people food, but she does paw at my arm until she gets to smell my breath when I’m eating. Our routine is for me to take a bite, open my mouth and breathe at her, and then she sniffs and walks away.
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