Besides kibbles and canned cat food – what do cats eat? If you look up the species, you’ll learn that they are carnivores – meat eaters – but that’s far from the whole story.
The short answer is: A cat eats what he wants to eat.
My College Room Cat
The first thing I did after moving out of my parents’ home was to get a cat. Yes, even before getting a refrigerator.
I studied and was on a low budget. My parents didn’t help me financially (but they did give me a refrigerator for my birthday in November).
All that to say that I didn’t have much to spend on food. A lot of the time, my meals consisted of mashed potatoes and peeled tomatoes. Or porridge.
When I had porridge, my cat had porridge. I don’t know if he liked it or not, but he ate it – because it was better than nothing.
When I splurged and bought a prepared meal consisting of chop suey, my cat also dined on chop suey.
Was that the most healthy choice? Nope. Neither for me, nor my cat, but we both survived until better times arrived.
My Sick Cat
Several years later I got a kitten that was really scrawny. I gave him kibbles or canned food, but he didn’t seem to get any nutrition from the food.
He didn’t do his business in the litter box, but all over the house, so I was deeply frustrated.
Somebody online in a cat group told me to try cooked fish and green peas.
I bought white, square fish and a bag of baby carrots and green peas and boiled it for ten minutes. Then I let it cool and served the meal for him.
He ate half of it… then he sat for several minutes, just swaying back and forth, then he ate the other half.
Since that day, I always fed him fish with baby carrots and green peas once a day. For his second meal, he had either kibbles or canned food. He thrived and grew big and strong.
One day, we’d run out of the vegetables, so he only had fish until we could go to the supermarket again. The following meal, he grabbed a carrot and ran with it, as if he was nervous that somebody would steal it from him again.
Perhaps he was an under-cover rabbit.
My Picky Cat
Some cats are picky eaters. I had one who would only eat one brand of kibbles, nothing else.
One day he escaped from home and only came back the following day. He wasn’t allowed to go out.
By chance, this happened just as we’d run out of the special brand of kibbles, and we couldn’t get more of it before the vet came back from vacation.
Instead, we gave him canned food (wouldn’t eat it), cod caviar (wouldn’t eat it) and other kinds of food we thought he would find delicious.
He chose to only eat enough to not starve until we had his favorite kibbles again. And he was a very well-behaved cat those days. He didn’t try to escape even once, because he was convinced that the lack of kibbles as a punishment because he’d run out.
My Cheese-Loving Cat
A lot of cats love cheese. If you feed your cat cheese, you should watch out for allergic reactions.
I had a cat who loved cheese. Some cheese more than others. He loved French and Dutch cheese mostly.
When we moved to Israel, he stopped eating cheese, because he didn’t like Israeli cheese.
Our friends from England brought us Cheddar, and he loved it.
Picky eater? At least when it came to cheese.
So There You Have It
Some cats like fish, some don’t. Most cats like meat, especially chicken. Eggs are good for them, and most cats will eat it.
But first and foremost: Fluffy eats what Fluffy wants to eat.
