The Changing Menu

I want to give my cats as wide a variety of food as possible, within certain restrictions that some have. The more or greater the restrictions, the more I try to find variety, since being confined in terms of what one can eat can become tiresome.

Valkyrie cannot eat chicken. Well, she can, but it gives her runny feces, which she then throws about in her commendable though messy efforts to stay clean. She is enjoying her Fussie Cat fish varieties; right now the ones with anchovies are popular with her. In the category of hard-food, I have a few varieties that she likes enough to go off like a police-car siren whenever she wants me to bring out the bowl.

Nonetheless, a new variety can be a bit of a challenge. The Eternal Kitten loves the Natural Balance salmon-and-green-pea. I mixed with that a new bag, one of duck-and-green-pea (Natural Balance seems to have an obsession with green peas). This alteration caught Valk by surprise.

First, she sniffed the contents of the bowl. Then she looked at me. Satisfying herself that the change was not a joke on my part, she carefully pulled one kernel out onto the floor. It was olfactorily examined individually, then cautiously tasted. It passed her test well enough for a second kernel. After that, she ate normally; the new flavour had passed muster.

Still, it doesn’t appear to be as favoured as the salmon-and-green-pea. I have another bag of that all ready, and will mix it with the newer variety at a proportion of three to one. This should encourage her to continue eating, even if she finds morsels of the lesser fare in the bowl.

It’s tough managing a restaurant when one’s clientele is the most finicky species on the planet.