New Thing #267--A Liking For Liver

We feed our cats, Jackson and Pepper, a quality dry cat food. Every morning their "serving" for the day gets measured out and put in a small container. We can't leave food out for them to nosh on whenever they feel like it; they get their "meals" several times a day in different parts of the house, because years ago Jackson was eating all the food and getting fat, while Pepper was looking gaunt.

Recently both cats have been indicating by their actions that they're not satisfied with the amount of food they're getting (even though the amount is exactly what the bag says they should be getting for their weight), so I decided to do some investigating to see if there was something else that would work better. After my research was over I went to the store, bought several varieties of food, and hosted a cat food tasting party for my pets.

I got food that was recommended by this site. The information seemed unbiased and up-to-date. When it was time to eat, the cats started doing their "Feed Me" dance. I put a portion of each food on two plates, and put the plates on the island in the kitchen. That's not where the cats eat, but I wanted to see if they liked what I was serving! However, neither of them would jump up. They must have thought I was going to give them medicine or cut their nails or something equally horrible, so I set the plates on the floor close to each other.

At first Jackson wouldn't even come near the plate, even though he's the one who's always looking for food. After I moved his plate around the corner, Jackson would "steal" a hunk of food, run away with it, and eat it by himself in the next room. After doing that a couple of times, he hunkered down over his plate and gobbled the food till it was gone; there was nothing finicky about his actions. He even licked his chops when he was finished.

Pepper started out enthusiastically, but after about a third of the food was gone he just started playing with it instead of eating it. After Jackson finished he came over and tried to eat some of Pepper's food. Some things never change! Although we shooed his brother away, Pepper lost interest in his food after that, so we picked the plate up. The party was over, and it was time to clean. As usual, the cats left that job up to us.

Unfortunately, the new food didn't fill the cats up any better than what they're used to, because they started asking for more food like clockwork at the usual time tonight. Back to the drawing board.