To think that cat food manufacturers are evil dog owners?

[SylvestersServant]

Because it’s absolutely impossible to open sachets of the disgusting, smelly, liquid filled, gravy ones that the furry overlords demand without ripping them part way, splashing it up the wall, getting it on your top, in your eye and on the floor rather than the bowl you’ve got on the counter?

And you can't recycle the bastards without washing them out and taking them to one supermarket in a town your mother in law lives in 6 miles away?

And no cat in the history of cat domination of the human species has ever eaten the beef flavour.

Won’t someone think of the Cat Slaves?

Yep.

I don’t have a cat any more but dd has 4😱, all of whom seem to be endlessly demanding their monstrously expensive food when I’m there. I cut the sachets open and spoon it out. No splashy mess.

My old boy won't eat food from a tin. It took us a long time a couple of years ago for us to find food that he would deign to eat - he went off everything.

Blimey! I've often wondered what cat food tastes like, whether it's salty or whatever. I can imagine it's quite gristly as my cat sometimes struggles with the odd piece and gives a look of disgust!

I wish mine would eat home cooked chicken. I wonder if I shred it small and put it in a gravy of some kindy. Has anyone got a recipe?

My cats don't like beef, lamb, duck, rabbit or salmon. Trying to avoid these is a headache. Cat food manufacturers need to make more single flavour multipacks.

One cat loves chicken but the other isn't keen. Has even been known to turn his nose up at the expensive free range roast chicken that I cook for myself! They will eat Applaws tuna sometimes, but get bored quickly if they have it too many days in a row 🙄

Yes, you need a dog clean up team available, they also make quick work licking sachets for recycling 😂

My cat is on a prescription diet, there are only pouches for the wet food afaik.

I'd be happy if he had dry food only, but he likes half a pouch of the wet for breakfast. If he gets bored, we have this chicken powder stuff to sprinkle on the top, he likes that - which is odd because if I give him actual chicken off my plate he won't touch it.

I cut the pouches open with scissors now to avoid the spatter and impossible pouch to bowl transfer.

Ours all have different likes and requirements! One will only lick the juice and leave the meat with wet food. She loved Encore broth but lately the broth part appears to have gone awol and it's just sticky meat! She basically wants soup so we've started making her bone broth. They're totally spoiled.

Too much salt is bad for cats, so not salty. I did try a little of the Applaws tuna, as it looked so much like tuna for humans. It did taste like tuna, but very, very bland. There is no way I would ever try anything like the normal pouches - chunks in gravy/jelly etc though. (Worst thing I ever tasted that wasn't meant to be human food (or food at all) was a Lush body wash, it just smelt so much like fresh bananas I couldn't help it, and it did taste like banana, it was just all the other flavours that were in there with it that were the problem...)

YANBU about everything apart from the beef comment. My greedy little madam will eat all flavours!! But yes, she lurves Gourmet Perle in a sachet with loads of gravy/jelly - yummy yummy!

Cat food has to be made as fit for human consumption as people do eat it.
I think making food for cats is a tricky thing as they need some amino acid which isn't found in plain meat (I may be wrong, please correct me if I am). Mine always had titbits of raw meat & loved it.

You would have to speak to my husband about the taste. I didn’t partake. He did say that there were “tubes” in the tinned food but the sachets were just little lumps of gunge. We used mainly chicken, but he did get pork too. More rarely, beef and lamb. Remember, salt isn’t good for them.

https://www.catster.com/nutrition/gravy-recipes-for-cats/

I use tins and a baby spoon. Sachets are so expensive.

be careful with home cooked meals for cats. They need a certain amount of taurine each day which is present in complete cat food, but they won’t be getting it in home cooked food unless you add supplements or offal to the food. Applaws and Encore wet foods are complementary, not complete, so should also not make up the majority of cats’ diets but be given as a treat.

I won't use the pouches for that reason. I use tins from Zooplus. Relatively high meat content compared to supermarket cat food and tins are recyclable.

The R/C gastrointestinal sachets Felix used to be on were in gravy. It was also recommended that due to him being a scarfer and barfer and also a massive chonk, to only give him half a sachet at a time. I can only assume the Vet that recommended this has never tried to get half a sachet of gravy filled cat food out. Most of the time it would either end up on my fingers 🤢 splashed on top of Felix's head as he was mega impatient or the first meal would look like a good amount and his evening meal would look like a couple of measly tsps. As soon as I realised supermarkets did grain free he was switched over to that and put back onto jelly ones. So much easier to half a sachet of that, no longer ended up all over my fingers although still occasionally ended up on top of his head whilst jumping up at the same time his food was going into his bowl, and also didn't cost no where near as much as the R/C stuff. The one flavour Felix would refuse to eat when he was younger was lamb. I started saving the lamb ones for my old NDN as her Cats liked it. Then I came home from work one day to find about 6 sachets of lamb cat food on the kitchen floor. All had little teeth marks in them and had been clawed apart and the contents eaten out of them. After that Felix was told to jog on each time he turned his nose up at a sachet of lamb food and was made to eat it. And yep why is it when you stock up on the chicken flavour they like. They suddenly decide they no longer like it and much prefer fishy flavours instead 😼 Oh and kudos to the poster who's husband has tried the cat foods to see why their Cats wouldn't eat it. He's braver than I am!! Although I did very nearly eat dog ice cream once. Thankfully i quickly realised what it was when I saw the picture of a dog on the front of the box and swiftly exchanged it for human ice cream 😂

Our original cats wouldn't touch the beef either. Then we got more cats, and fortunately they will eat the beef so it no longer goes to waste.

One is an absolute dustbin and will eat any wet food he can get. Won't touch the biscuits though - he'd starve first.

There is taurine in muscle meat and loads in offal such as heart, liver and kidneys. The trouble with offal is that it typically also contains high levels of vitamin A which isn’t good for cats so they shouldn’t be fed lots of it.

That’s why we kept one meal a day as commercial dried food, which he would eat.

...Two cats that I saved from a dumpster turn out to be picky…
That’s probably why they were in a dumpster.

I understand that quite a few manufacturers stopped making venison cat food as they found it was two deer.

I use Sheba pouches no issues
Shake it down to the bottom and hold upright and firmly tear before you tip it out
Or use scissors

(Aware Sheba is shite but he will only eat cheap wet and expensive dry...)

@WellOwlBeDamned cat soup, or you can get broth

amzn.eu/feGUiiw

😂 the cat soup is the impossible stuff as I’ve only seen it in pouches but thanks and to baking for the tip as well

on googling the reindeer on zooplus it appears reasonable price from UK but not deliverable to NI, or available from IE site but nearly a 1/3 extra cost

thankfully I know where some live deer are raised so with Amelia’s encouragement I shall take the cats poaching - they can have first dibs on anything they bring down and as getaway driver I should get a share too

win-win

<pockets hunting knife for divving up & dons balaclava>