Okay, I know how the headline reads.  Let's unpack that. 

When I was a kid, we always had pets in the house.  When I was really young (think early eighties), we apparently had a German Shephard dog, but I don't remember it. We never had a dog after that. I remember cats.  We had a cat named Sunny that was an orange tabby or something like that.  I remember as a kid my parents told me one day that Sunny had gone to live on a farm.  I totally believed it.  Why? Because my Grandparents had a farm out in Smithton. I thought, "Oh sure, someone needed another barn cat, no big deal." Even when I was that age, I knew that possums, raccoons, rats, bugs, all sorts of creatures could get into the barn and eat feed they weren't supposed to. So, you have to have barn cats to keep them away. It made sense that Sunny was needed.

Of course... I didn't put together that Sunny was far, far too old to chase rats anymore.  Didn't catch up to one til I was about 19. Can you blame me, though?

We had another cat growing up that was Sunny's daughter, Popeye.  We had her til she turned almost twenty. We had a few others here and there, but Popeye was the constant of my childhood. So we always had cat food in the house. Now, I was a precocious kid.  And I had an older sister.  You know that from time to time, if kids are left unsupervised for ONE SPLIT SECOND, they're going to do stuff their parents don't want them to do.  Even good kids, if they're too quiet... parents get nervous.

Well, I don't remember what I had done, but apparently I had done something to annoy  my older sister. And her being bigger and stronger than  me, she decided to trick me.  She told me that she had some snacks, and that I should try some.  I did. It was cat kibble.

Now, cat kibble wasn't that bad. It wasn't that great, but it wasn't vomit inducing.  But once I figured out what had gone down, I was not about to fall for the next stunt.  I was a Big Girl, going to first grade! You couldn't fool me twice!  So when it came to the wet food, well. I didn't want to eat it. That didn't matter though, because like I said, she was bigger than me, four years older than me, more experienced than me.  I tried to evade, I tried to talk my way out of it, I even tried hiding.  But the reckoning would come.   She sat on  my chest and made me eat it.  If I remember rightly, she held my nose shut and shoved it in my pie hole when I gave up to breathe.  Kids.

It was...not pleasant.  At all.  The taste was one thing, but the texture was something altogether unpleasant. I had the taste in my  mouth for hours. I even caught little bits between my teeth when I flossed that night.  I wouldn't recommend it, even now.  Which made this article just blow my mind.  If you don't want to read it, it basically points out how about 40% of pet owners have tried their dog or cat's food.  FORTY PERCENT.

I mean, I get that you want to make sure your pet is getting good, nutritious food.  But... to see how it tastes?  That seems too far. Or maybe I'm cynical because I've already been down that road, and my curiosity would have already been satiated.

But.. .they're pets, guys. Their taste buds are completely different from ours.  You can't trust what they like or don't like! My cat turns up her nose at delicious chicken, but will hide away cardboard to snack on it when I'm not home. How is that delicious? And taste is subjective.  I love to eat dried seaweed, not everybody loves that.  And some humans can't even be trusted to love hot sauce on everything.  How can you extend that trust to your animals?! You can't depend on what they like or don't like!  I'd say, it would not be worth it to try it again as an adult. I would let the animal decide what it does and doesn't like.  Heck, your dog may love your dog food...but your dog also drinks out of the toilet and eats other dog's poop.  So maybe don't worry so much about whether your dog's food is tasty.

Have you ever tried your dog or cat's food?  How'd it happen? What did you think?

Tastily yours,

Behka

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