What if the cats wouldn't eat the chicken?
Asked by
Jeruba (
56061
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November 22nd, 2022
Last night, to avoid fussing with dinner, I brought home a packaged, prepared salad. It was labeled “chicken and bacon Caesar.” All the ingredients were in separate little plastic compartments.
I mixed the bacon and hardboiled eggs in with the lettuce and added some tomatoes, but I balked at the small, neat cubes of pale, pinkish so-called chicken. They just looked unwholesome to me. So I skipped them.
I live in a very catly neighborhood, so last night I left a little bowl with the chicken cubes on the porch, figuring that one of my many feline neighbors would pass through in the night and find a treat.
This morning they were still there, untouched.
What, if anything, does this tell us about the pale, super-processed-looking little chicken dice, that the cats wouldn’t eat them? when they do eat even canned cat food?
I shudder to think.
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10 Answers
It tells us you made a wise decision to forego the chicken.
Wow. That is something. I’m going with the cats know best. Actually, you knew too. Chicken like that is usually very salty, and maybe it has a lot of preservatives too?
I found myself wondering how much of “chicken” has to be actual chicken to merit the label, and how it got so compressed that it could be cubed in neat 1-centimeter units with crisp, uniform edges.
The last time I did eat something like that, it didn’t taste like much of anything, but the texture was vaguely repugnant.
That reminds me of the square egg I was served at McDonald’s. Cats seem to avoid the place.
That tells me you definitely live in a different neighborhood. About 60 yards from my house I placed a flat stone flush with the lawn and put a motion sensitive light nearby. I use that spot as my food donation drop off point. Anything I put out at night is gone by the next morning. Food leftovers, mice caught in traps, wilted salad, cracked eggs, etc., are all taken away and enjoyed by wildlife – except for salad. Crows and bluejays take that way during daylight hours.
If a fox doesn’t eat it, a raccoon will. Mice and voles will snag small bits and dart back to the woodpile with their treasures. The opossums run cleanup duty on anything remaining.
I learned the calorie requirements for different animals from our animal expert @syz and try to keep my “donations” below about ¼ of their daily needs so they don’t lose their hunting and scavenging skills..
@LuckyGuy I do the same thing in our yard (well away from our house) that’s boarded on 3 sides by woods. Raccoons, opossums, coyotes and crows pass through daily. Nothing is still there in the morning (no matter how old and greasy).
FWIW, I’ve bought a prepared Asian salad at my supermarket several times with the chicken cubes and they’ve tasted fine. Don’t know if feral cats would agree or not.
@janbb Me, too, and also always been fine. Chacon à son gout, I guess.
Maybe it was Impossible Chicken made from plants ?
Uh huh. I once gave my left over chicken pot pie to my cat. She licked all the gravy and totally ignored the “chicken.
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