The Sound You Heard was “NOOOOO!!!!!”
Woman in the Middle | August 20, 2015Did you know that while humans have an average of 10,000 taste buds and dogs have an average of 1700 taste buds, cats, on average, only have 470? When I learned this a couple of weeks ago it explained so much. This is why the smell of food is so important to cats. Which is why the kibble fresh out of the bag is so much more desirable than the kibble that has been in the bowl for a while. Which is why cold food is so much less desirable than room temperature food. In other words, this is why cats are so d*** picky.
That cats are picky is very obvious when you visit the cat food aisle at any store. There are so many different kinds of cat food, both in taste and in texture. There are slivers and chucks and pates and things with gravy and things with out gravy. There are several kinds of fish flavors, morning flavors with egg and bacon, flavors of food from every kind of animal you can think of other than roadkill. (Not that cats wouldn’t like roadkill, I am sure they would.)
Which brings me to Blackie, my 16-year-old picky eater. Blackie likes the pate types of food. In particular, he likes the Iams pate because it is completely smooth, with no chunks, and he doesn’t really like chunks. If we give him a canned food with chunks he will lick the chunks dry but not actually eat the chunks. Since he usually gets medicine in his canned food, we feel it is better to give him the food that he will eat completely. So, Iams it is. There are about three kinds of the Iams pate. Local pet stores carry two or three. But my local grocery store only carries one kind. That is OK. Blackie likes it. He eats it. When I am in a pet store I pick up a couple of cans of the other flavors for a treat. Otherwise, I just buy the variety they carry in my local grocery store.
I was in the store yesterday and one of the items I needed to pick up was some Iams for Blackie. It was on sale for 49 cents a can. Oh goody! But the shelf sticker had an additional tag attached. It said “Closeout savings.” That weird noise you heard yesterday afternoon about 4 pm pacific daylight time was me screaming “NOOOOO!” Needless to say, I bought every can they had, 17 in all.
The nearest pet store is at least 15 minutes from my house and not on my way to anywhere. My area has five grocery stores – four of them are all the same company, so I am out of luck there. The fifth one doesn’t carry Iams. The only thing that is good in all of this is that there is a Petco down the street from where Hubby works. Obviously I will have to monitor much more closely our inventory of the precious Iams pate and call him when more is needed. Sigh….
I get it. I have a cat who eats gravy. That’s all, just gravy. She will lick the grave off of all the chunks, slivers, fillets or whatever they call them. Fortunately (or maybe not) I have another cat who eats anything. I can usually get her to finish everything off. (Then I wonder why she’s tubby!)
I’m sorry your grocery store doesn’t carry Blackie’s cat food anymore. And thanks for clarifying what that LOUD noise was the other day. It did sound like NOOO! but I couldn’t tell.
Blackie is one lucky cat to have you for a pawrent!