More of Life with Oscar

As everyone knows, Oscar is a an incredibly fussy eater. For a feral stray who, after 4 years of us faithfully feeding him, still won’t allow us to touch him, he is very demanding and fussy. Oscar does not eat dry cat food. Let me repeat that. Oscar does not eat dry cat food. Ever.

Oscar has always enjoyed dining on whatever we happen to be eating for dinner. He is particularly fond of fresh, wild caught Sockeye salmon at $18/pound. We don’t have this on a weekly basis but whenever we do Oscar is here, staring in at us through a window or the kitchen door. He knows. He always knows. He definitely knows the difference between wild caught and farm raised salmon, and also knows the difference between fresh and frozen salmon. The one thing he religiously eats every bite of is fresh caught, wild salmon. He was clearly a foodie in another life.

It’s a good thing Oscar is cute; I took this picture through the glass of our kitchen door

For a long time Oscar’s preferred variety of canned food was pates. Then he decided he was done with the pates, and Jason purchased him a case of canned filets (remember, no dry cat food). He ate the filets quite well for awhile but recently his enthusiasm for the filets has been decreasing. We decided to run taste tests to see if he preferred a certain flavor. Instead of dumping a couple of cans of of food in his bowl (Oscar is usually good for 2 – 4 cans per day) we simply took the lids off the cans and put them out. Then we watched our feral cat eat. We ran this experiment several times with different flavors.

What would Oscar do? He would evenly split his eating between whatever two flavors we had placed in front of him. He would take two bites from one can and then two bites from the other can. Back and forth and back and forth. He really is an ungrateful and unhelpful thing.

I think I’ll eat from this can . . .

. . . actually I think I’ll eat from this can instead

We haven’t decided if we’ll try yet another version of canned cat food. There appears to be the meaty bits, savory shreds, flaked, tasty treasures accented with real bacon, sauceations and gravy sensations variations available. Yes, I actually looked this up. Five minutes of my life I can’t get back researching canned cat food varieties for a feral cat I haven’t been able to touch for the four years I’ve been feeding him.

We have a little bistro table on one of our porches where we sometimes eat dinner. I refer to it as Oscar’s throne.

Our two house cats, Jingle and Joy, eat dry cat food. In fact they’ve been eating the same dry cat food for the 18 months we’ve had them. Oscar eats far better than they do, and costs a lot more to feed. At up to four cans a day he’s kind of like feeding a skinny Thoroughbred.

Maybe one day we’ll be allowed to pet him. I’ve got my doubts.

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Rip and Grand