More Heartwarming Common Ground Between The Species

"Water tastes way better from a human glass than from a cat bowl!"

I wrote recently about Laila's aversion to bedtime and compared her to young human children.  Well, it turns out that's not the only thing the two species share!  It turns out Laila is also a picky eater.

When we first brought Laila home, her appetite was generally pretty light.  We took her to the vet within the first week, and he was concerned about how skinny she was.  He wanted us to try to encourage her to eat more, and he recommended a high protein prescription cat food.  He said it was made of things like venison and potatoes.  As far as cat food goes, it sounded pretty tasty to me.

We bought three cans of this liquid gold at $4 apiece.  When I first served it to Laila, she ate it with apparent enthusiasm.  I set about trying to find it online for cheaper.  Ultimately, I found it for less, got the vet to fax the prescription to the company, and received a shipment of 24 cans.  I figured we'd be set for a while.

And, for a while, we were.  But then I started to notice Laila eating less and less of the canned food I offered her and eating more of the dry food I leave out as a supplement.  I wondered if she was starting to prefer dry food.  But then, one day, I fed her some of the canned Meow Mix that our vet told us was like cat junk food.  She ate every morsel of that.

I'm guessing that she may have just gotten tired of her prescription food.  I still have a number of cans of it left, though.  Right now, I'm alternating those with other types of food.  And, in order to try to trick her into eating some of her prescription food, I put Meow Mix--with its chunks of mystery meat and foul looking gravy--on top.  This must be the cat equivalent of crumbling a bunch of Cheez-Its on top of a lobster tail.

Interestingly, the other day, I fed her a new type of canned cat food.  It was a higher end brand and made of salmon and trout.  Much like her prescription food, it sounded relatively appetizing....

She wouldn't even try a bite.

We're very curious how she survived as a stray cat before she was brought to the animal shelter.  Since we'll never know, I just have to laugh and compare her to the small children I've known who adhere to diets of only white foods or eschew all veggies.