Give cats a break — adults are finicky, too

I wouldn't say I'm addicted to pasta, but if I don't have at least one feed of spaghetti and meatballs or meat sauce, or just tomato soup a week, preferably Thursday, I get real cranky. Moody. Pouty. And I too think about tearing the curtains off the patio doors.

So, who can blame the cat when his most favourite food in the world has just been recalled?

I've tried to explain to him, please, it's just a temporary recall; it will be back sooner or later. Pleeeeeease, just eat something else for now. I show him the old bag, stretch out my empty hands. I shake the bag and shrug my shoulders. I give him a reasonable facsimile of his favourite, but he turns his nose up. Whips his tail. Turns his back to me. Flat out refuses to eat. Consequences be what they may.

I'm thinking, maybe if I take him to all the grocery stores and show him the empty shelves. We've spent $37.50 since this recall has set in, on food the cat won't eat. It's like going to the casino. It would have been just as well if I stood on the roof and threw money down onto the street. And I know, you're all saying, well, let him go hungry; he'll eat eventually.

Right. The age-old toughlove philosophy that never works. You can't ... look, my whole life I've wanted to like sardines. The word itself sounds delicious! How healthy and simple life would be! But I physically can't eat a bite of a sardine, and I'd willingly starve to death rather than have to.

My aunt once tried that age-old philosophy on me when I was a kid. Strapped me to the chair; told me I wasn't going to school until I ate her porridge. Well. I failed Grade 4.

SENSIBLE SOLUTIONS

It seems like a sensible solution to get kids or cats to eat, but sensible solutions and people and for sure cats, don't always mix. Actually, kids, to an extent, are right. They have to grow into some foods. I mean, true, you can't raise a child on chips and pop and Oreos. But at five years old they aren't all ready for cabbage rolls. OK, cabbage rolls is a bad example. Who doesn't like cabbage rolls? Say, coleslaw. Pickled eggs. Liver.

I have learned an interesting lesson in this cat food recall though. I've learned that, inadvertently, we've been feeding our cat the equivalent of a chip and pop diet for the past five years. I've discovered that of all the cat food on the planet, the stuff he most loved is right there on the bottom of the good food pyramid with cheese puffs. I don't know how that cat is even still alive.

Yet, when I was a kid, we had cats who ate nothing but table scraps and mice. Saucers of milk. A piece of chicken here, a fish head there or a bit of seafood chowder from the bottom of a pot.

Anyway now, the hunt is on for good cat food. When we brought our guy home, he wouldn't eat canned food; he's always been a dry food cat, but I tried it on him yesterday because I read that there is more meat in meat than there is in pellets. More protein, fewer carbs. And cats are carnivores.

No. They don't choose to be carnivores. They are. Jazz devoured a can of chicken pate in a way that told me that if he were the size of a German shepherd, we'd all be running for our lives.

All this, by the way, without a word from the cat. To get what he wants, he mimes. He backs away from his dish. His eyes get big. He falls over. He actively ignores us.

I never thought of that.