Feline Tastes

I did not grow up with a cat, but I was taught that vegetables and fruit were essential for your corporal health. Thus, when I acquired my cat, I had no preconceived notions of what constituted normal cat behaviour. I did have the idea that vegetation would be good for it. I also thought that introducing it to green stuff should be done as soon as possible.

My method was to take a tiny piece of whatever vegetable I was having and offer it to my kitten. Broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, peas, she tried them all. The day she ate multiple lima beans, I was ecstatic! I dislike lima beans and I had inadvertently bought the bag of frozen vegetables with lima beans. I had found a way of disposing of them without wasting them.

Then my mother found out. Despite having forced me to eat numerous sorts of vegetables and assuring me it was for my own good, she adamantly told me to stop. "Cats don't eat vegetables!" As she was currently looking after my cat at the time, I was powerless to stop the narrowing of my cat's diet.

My cat now does not remember that she prefers broccoli to cauliflower, that she thinks she likes peas, but doesn't. She does however, most emphatically, remember apples and is convinced that they are wonderful.

Biting into an apple will bring her from her current hiding spot to your side. She will wind herself around your legs if you are walking and follow you around until you reach the core. If you are sitting, she will try and help herself to the apple, one paw held out in a gentle appeal. She monitors the progression of the apple eating, watching the shrinking core. When the core stage is reached and the core is held out to her, she tilts her head, and starts on the business of eating the apple. The edges of the core are scrapped of with her teeth, while the rest is slowly rasped away by her tongue. Sometimes she puts a paw up to assist, but the entire attitude is one of sheer bliss.

I hear frequently in relation to my cat, "I've never seen a cat do that before." Which I take to mean, the person hasn't met someone previously who had tried it.

My cat may not be a normal cat, but she and I don't know any different. We're convinced she's a perfectly normal feline.