Japan team discovers why cats leave meals unfinished - The Japan Times

My male cat has a selection of usually 3 different food types, with 2 varying scents per type, so I can convert to another when the boredom sets in!
 
Cats are pretty notorious for getting bored of a food! But always good to do the science and not rely on assumptions. Thanks for posting FO!

We have a static dry option and rotating varieties of wet food every day, but we have limited options as it has to be hypoallergenic for our sensitive baby boy 😂
 
We've just had to cancel our standing order as Benny (ex feral who never used to be fussy) is now bored of all their flavours. I told my OH we just need to get some random stuff in for a few weeks then he'll be fine again.
 
Sort of oversimplifies what is quite a complex set of behaviours… (No link to study so can’t easily say if article is drawing an accurate conclusion as a lot of the time newspaper article summary’s of research papers are rather good at missing the point entirely)

If my interpretation is correct and they were starving the cats for 16 hours at a time and then trying to encourage them to eat a lot in a short period then study design didn’t really reflect what is widely perceived as the natural feeding pattern of cats. (They like to graze on small, frequent meals without long periods in between meals. Off the top of my head the ideal no of “meals” for a cat in 24hrs is 8-15 with each meal having roughly the calorie content of 1 mouse)

It is already widely established that food designed to be very palatable, especially that is is energy dense can encourage cats to over eat past the point where they would naturally stop (and contribute towards obesity)

Cats also easily develop aversions to food that they associate with a negative experience (eg if they eat it and feel nauseous even for an unrelated reason but also sometimes if they eat a food whilst stressed / scared they can associate the food with that emotion and then avoid it in future… would be interesting to see what they were doing to reduce stress in the study cats)

Most cats DO like “new” things and some cats definitely do prefer rotation in flavours / textures but there are also a lot of them that will actively avoid flavours or textures that they didn’t come across during weaning / early life as a kitten. (I’m talking “will only eat this specific flavour of this specific brand” level of mistrust)

Basically cats are way weirder and more complex than one study can quantify
 
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