I feed a menagerie on my back porch. It includes several cats, possums and raccoons who amble by on a nightly basis to stuff their furry faces. For a time, I paid scant attention to what I put in the bowls. One brand, I figured, is just like another and I always mocked the blurbs where they tout "better taste." A lot of pet food advertising, I believe, is based on the premise that we purchase it as if we're going to be the ones dining on it. We look at the label for Alpo Sliced Beef in Gravy and we say, "Mmm…sliced beef in gravy. That sounds yummy." As if what sounds good to our palates has anything to do with what our animals will like. So, in that spirit, I purchased whatever was on sale.
For a while, that's been Friskies Chef's Blend and it seemed to be acceptable to all, disappearing like chopped liver at a Bar Mitzvah reception. I had no reason to change until one evening, I was out of food and in my friendly neighborhood Sav-On Pharmacy. They didn't have any Chef's Blend so I bought the cheapest thing on their shelves, which was the store brand of Albertson's, a supermarket chain owned by the same corporation. I took it home and filled the dish…and they wouldn't eat the stuff.
The cats wouldn't eat it. The raccoons wouldn't eat it. Even the possums, which supposedly will eat just about anything, wouldn't eat Albertson's "Original Formula" cat food. There was a bit of nibbling around the edges but, for the most part, the vittles went untouched.
At first, I thought, well, maybe no animals came by but, the next day, after a trip to the market, I put a dish of Friskies out next to the Albertsons food. The following morning, the Albertson's food was all there — every morsel of it — but the other bowl had been licked clean.
So what was I to do with the whole bag of the Albertson's food? I didn't want to waste it so, the next evening, I tried filling both dishes with a mixture of the two brands. I thought this was very resourceful but later, when I walked through the kitchen, I noticed a raccoon out there, carefully picking the Friskies food out…and with much the same precision I use to take the peas I can't eat out of Campbell's Vegetable Soup. As he did this, he glared at me with a look that seemed to say, "You're making this very difficult, you know."
I finally wound up putting the Albertson's food out during the day, when starlings and crows sometimes swoop down on the cat dishes. I'm not sure if the birds actually eat it or if they just "bathe" in the bowls and scatter the food all over so the gardener will sweep it up and throw it out. Either way, I finally got rid of the food the animals won't eat and I now serve only Friskies Chef's Blend out there. Earlier this evening, I noticed a raccoon nosing around the dishes, which were empty. I went out to fill them, scaring him away. Then, once I came back in and closed the door, I waited to see if he'd come back. He did. He snuck up, sniffed the Friskies, tasted a few bites. Then he looked at me with an expression that could only have meant, "I'm glad to see you've learned something."