Virgil Evetts

I once met a man who from time to time ate cat food. He was neither crazy (well, not dangerously so)  nor destitute, he just liked the flavour of a certain brand of cat-sardines better than their pricier human-aimed counterparts. He also claimed jelly meat wasn’t bad…

I wasn’t convinced and have not, and probably will not, put these endorsements  to the test anytime soon (although we live at sea level, about 100 metres away from the water’s edge and are woefully ill prepared for a tsunami, or similar, so wait and see…).

But what I wonder is, apart from a rather laid-back approach to food hygiene standards on the production line, is there any reason why we shouldn’t eat cat food? Cats are fussier than most people when it comes to food, so you have to assume the stuff tastes ok.  Most of the expensive little cans my cats favour are full of intriguingly lurid ingredients (many of which I quite like too), such as duck, shrimp, chicken liver, “flaked white-fish”, “wild game,” various vegetables and even cheese…quite a bit better than most of what I eat.  You might well say I’m falling straight into the marketers’ trap by buying for my cats with my own tastes, but even if these seemingly ‘haute cuisine’ products are mostly bulked out with horse meat I’m still interested (I don’t trust horses – too much snout – but I’m very happy to eat them, and have done so on several occasions.  That is to say I’ve eaten horse meat on several occasions, not whole horses).

When I think about it all that really puts me off eating cat food is the way it looks, the horrid, wet shucking noise it makes when it slides out of the can and that pervasive bully-beef odour. Oh, and the whole social taboo thing too I guess.

Dog food, however, I wouldn’t go near if you paid me. (Well maybe if you paid me.).  Dogs are classless, crass and indiscriminate creatures. They will just as happily eat a pool of vomit as a nice piece of sirloin, so any food aimed at their dubious tastes should be approached with caution.

So. Am I the only person who has glanced at the ingredients in  Señora  Cat-o’s dinner and thought… could I?

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