Gratuitous pet survey: Unexpected stuff pets like to eat
By Gina Spadafori
September 13, 2008
Lots of serious topics lately, and more to come as we figure out just how much trouble Hurricane Ike has caused and will cause as the storm sweeps northeast.
In the meantime, a question for everyone: What surprising thing does your pet love to eat?
I have two answers to start things off:
- Clara, my 1-year-old cat, loves little graham crackers, specifically Annie’s Bunny Grahams. She will beg for them shamelessly, and mug the box to fish them out if I’m not vigilant.
- Heather, my almost 12-year-old retriever, loves greens, all greens, but especially dandelion greens and kale. I’ll hand her handfuls to munch for a treat, or shred some in the mini food processor and use as an ingredient for her meals. (When pureed, the greens — especially the dandies– make the kitchen smell as if I just mowed the lawn in the house!)
The other pets aren’t nearly as singular in their desires: They’ll eat just about anything. Although Eddie the parrot is especially fond of blueberries. (Voice of experience: Make sure your parrot is in his cage for a while after eating them. You don’t want to be cleaning up after blueberries!)
So … what’s on your pet’s plate of preferences?
Stuff to read while I’m getting breakfast for four dogs, two cats, a parrot and 12 chickens: Dr. Khuly’s two parter on reasons why clients fire their vets and vets fire their clients may help you have a better working relationship with your veterinarian — and better health for your pet as a result. Here and here. … In Seattle, volunteer veterinarians have quit the much-maligned King County animal shelters, citing citing a lack of accountability and a reluctance from shelter staff to fix a broken system. … Terrierman notes an increased interest by AKC to welcome puppy-millers into the fold. Why? It’s good for business. … Best in Flock looks at the myths regarding clicker training and parrots. … DogCars.com sells another Honda Element. Too bad we don’t work on commish. … SmartDogs offers a recipe for homemade laundry soap. Not really pet-related but still mega-cool. (Although, I swear I do more dog laundry than people laundry.) … and on Bark Obama! a secret from my past involving a sock puppet. Shhhhhhhh. … The Green Monkey, sold for $16 million as a unraced 2-year-old in 2006, will assume stud duties next year, for a mere $5,000. He raced four times, never winning or even looking capable of winning.
Frozen blueberries….my 4 1/2 month old golden will come running no matter what he is doing when I say bluuuuuueberries!!! They don’t travel too well though for our walks!
Comment by Carol V — September 13, 2008 @ 8:08 am
Digby likes to hunt and eat crickets.
Dash likes a little dirt now and then.
Rowan succeeded in swallowing a cat toy, had surgery - guess what? - no more cat toys around here (except dogs).
Comment by Caveat — September 13, 2008 @ 8:40 am
My dog Ukiah also loves blueberries—and bananas. But what he REALLY loves is tomatoes. I’m growing a couple of cherry tomatoes, and he likes to hang out in the tomato patch, grazing.
Comment by Arlene — September 13, 2008 @ 8:54 am
My dog Andy (who died in 2002) loved tomatoes so much he would stare at them as if he thought he could make them roll off the counter by strength of will.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — September 13, 2008 @ 9:10 am
My dearly departed old tomcat Max (2006) used to LOVE granola. He would chew through packaging to get at it, then drag it off under the bed as if he’d killed it.
He was also inordinately fond of daisy petals.
What a great, weird cat he was. I still miss him.
Comment by LauraL — September 13, 2008 @ 9:34 am
Audie ate the freshly-shed skin of a rat snake this morning. Apparently it didn’t agree as he puked it up on my bed about 20 minutes later.
Off to use that soap….
Comment by Janeen — September 13, 2008 @ 9:49 am
My current dog is the PICKIEST dog I’ve ever met. When I’m clicker-training, I have to make sure all the treats in the bag are the same kind - no “mix it up” surprise for this guy! Even if it’s a treat he likes, just the fact that it’s a DIFFERENT treat than the one I handed him last time causes him to stop a moment to examine it carefully before taking it - NOT the sort of thing to keep a good training rhythm going at all! LOL!
A previous dog used to love, Love, LOVE dollar buns from the bakery! She would jump two feet into the air for one, and she was not a big dog! (She was also a very well-behaved dog - until dollar buns came into the picture!)
Oh - and as a soapmaker, I just gotta comment on that laundry soap entry. I always giggle when I see statements like “Strong soap is soap that is made with lye” or “Mild soaps have oils added”. Because - you see - ALL soaps are made by combining some form of fat or oil with a strong base such as lye. When the lye hits the oil, a chemical reaction called “saponification” kicks in (get it? Saponification - Soap - that’s where the name comes from, after all!).
If you have a completely “balanced” recipe, all the lye reacts with all the fats/oils, and neither one is “left over” in the finished bar of soap. But some people find balanced recipes to be drying, so they like to weight the recipe a little in favor of the oils - usually by UNbalancing the recipe deliberately on the oil side.
On the other hand, however - you don’t typically deliberately leave leftover lye in a soap recipe since a strong base will do a real number on skin, fabric, etc. - not a good thing. However, it’s easy to see that if you’re aiming for a perfectly balanced recipe, and that if you’re not very, very good with your measurements, that you can, indeed, end up with lye left over. Hence the reputation for “lye” soaps that has come into the common useage. It’s not something people do deliberately (not that I’m aware of, anyway). It’s just what can happen all too easily when you’re using a recipe that skates on that thin edge of being “perfectly balanced”.
Here’s a webpage that might make things a little easier to understand:
http://www.canis-art.com/soaping.htm
Comment by The OTHER Pat — September 13, 2008 @ 12:47 pm
Bertie Woofster is very fond of cashews, and Cueball the Naked Mole Cat loves lettuce.
Comment by Eucritta — September 13, 2008 @ 1:11 pm
All my cats have loved green olives. Weirdos. My current cat is also a big fan of cantaloupe and green beans.
My Boxer loves just about everything, including dill pickles and lemons. Pretty much, if you eat it, she will, too. She also likes edamame and cabbage. I don’t recommend the last one, because of the toxic emissions, but trying to stop my mom from feeding it to her has proven impossible.
I had a horse when I was a kid who loved fish sticks, pizza bones, and coffee (he drank from a cup). Those, too, were entirely my mom’s fault.
Comment by Shelly — September 13, 2008 @ 1:13 pm
Bertie Woofster is very fond of cashews, and Cueball the Naked Mole Cat loves lettuce.
Comment by Eucritta — September 13, 2008
BERTIE WOOFSTER!
I love it … Do you have a cat named Jeeves, too?
Comment by Gina Spadafori — September 13, 2008 @ 2:21 pm
Do you have a cat named Jeeves, too?
Not yet!
Comment by Eucritta — September 13, 2008 @ 2:33 pm
Thomas (cat) adores bread products of all sorts. Especially tortillas, bagels, and hot dog buns. He’s also fond of peanut butter cookies, graham crackers, cashews, tapioca, ice cream, pizza, tastykakes, and buffalo wings.
Alas, he’s diabetic, so.. no snacking for this cat. (When I can help it, anyway- he’s a former feral, so he can be pretty resourceful in the getting-into-stuff department.)
I once had to decline a fructosamine test at the local emergency vet’s with the admission that, earlier in the week, I’d come home to find Thomas sitting in the trash can.. *drinking pancake syrup*. We invested in a pricey new (reasonably) kitty-proof trash can after that one.
Comment by Gwen — September 13, 2008 @ 2:42 pm
My dogs and my cats LOVE blueberries and cantaloupe
Comment by Joy — September 13, 2008 @ 4:06 pm
On a more serious note: I had a cat who loved avocados so much I had to go to great lengths to hide them from him. I also had a dog who had a taste for fresh lemons and limes.
RE Soap: Thanks Pat! Actually I do understand the chemistry of soap (took oodles of chemistry classes in graduate school and worked with it for decades after) but chose to keep it simple in my post. I probably should have just noted that soaps made for washing skin (i.e. those ‘unbalanced’ ones with unsaponified oils were not the best choice.
Thanks for the link!
Comment by Janeen — September 13, 2008 @ 4:10 pm
I’ve got a dog who will eat black olives. Not on a pizza, you understand (although she most certainly would eat them that way) but just plain.
I had a horse once named Cokie. I never really questioned the name, he came with it and it was a perfectly good call name. Until I was cooling him out at a show one day and stopped by the concesstion stand to get myself a Coke. He practically ripped the cup out of my hand! He adored soft drinks, and would drink them out of a cup, can or bottle equally well. It didn’t seem to do him any harm, and he lived to be 42. Part of his last meal before we had him put down was a drink of Coke. I still miss that horse!
Comment by Barb — September 13, 2008 @ 4:15 pm
“concession stand” - sorry, just typing too fast!
Comment by Barb — September 13, 2008 @ 4:18 pm
My Whippet, Peach, loves coffee beans. I found that out when I dropped one on the floor by mistake.
Comment by Cate — September 13, 2008 @ 4:44 pm
My toy fox Jazi is a fiend for cheerios, and a merciless hunter of potato bugs which are carefully de-legged prior to consumption,poor things.
Our original bulldog, Rags, once ate a five pound bag of un-cooked rice which resulted in an emergency room visit and a lot of dirty looks on her part…
Comment by JenniferJ — September 13, 2008 @ 5:46 pm
I had a little ditch-moggie, Goblin, who was mad for cantaloupe. She would beg it shamelessly.
Moe, Son of Pip, adores apple cores.
Then there was the incident involving our late lamented Mel and about ten pounds of rabbit pellets and the lightest carpet in the house.
Mel did not believe in moderation in any things.
Comment by H. Houlahan — September 13, 2008 @ 6:05 pm
My Persians used to love oatmeal pancakes. Otherwise, they were total “meat and dairy” cats, but for some reason, they loved this pancake recipe and every time I made them, I had to give them each one.
Unlike most of ag collegues, my dog won’t eat vegetables. Even if she’s given a carrot to chew (a real favorite for most of my collegues’ dogs), Pepper will grind it with her molars and then very carefully, spit out all the little orange bits. I got tired of cleaning up piles of orange goo, so it’s raw bones only for her!
Comment by Dorene — September 13, 2008 @ 6:11 pm
Comment by Janeen — September 13, 2008 @ 4:10 pm
“RE Soap: Thanks Pat! Actually I do understand the chemistry of soap (took oodles of chemistry classes in graduate school and worked with it for decades after) but chose to keep it simple in my post. I probably should have just noted that soaps made for washing skin (i.e. those ‘unbalanced’ ones with unsaponified oils were not the best choice.”
Kathy Miller has one of the most extensive soapmaking sites on the ‘Net. One of the first things you see when you get there is an animated banner across the top saying something like “You can’t make soap without lye!” because she got SO tired of fending off people who wanted to know where to get recipes for soaps that didn’t require lye:
http://millersoap.com/
I also always laugh when people think they’re making “lye-less soap” by using those melt-and-pour blocks. Um - how do they think the melt and pour blocks got made in the first place?
Oh well. As long as my soap works for me, I guess that’s the most important thing!
Comment by The OTHER Pat — September 13, 2008 @ 7:38 pm
I once had a cat named Rocky who loved asparagus tips. I had to eat the rest. He got the best part.
One of my present cats loves corn. No peace until she has her share of fresh microwaved corn.
Comment by Colorado Transplant — September 13, 2008 @ 7:55 pm
My dog loves molasses crisps. She likes anything with molasses in it. A few years ago, I found dog cookies with molasses in them at Trader Joe’s. She went nuts for them. She also loves bananas, green beans and pizza crust. She’ll go up into a perfect “sit pretty” beg pose for French bread. You don’t even have to ask.
Comment by C.L.H. — September 13, 2008 @ 8:47 pm
Tonight my cat brought something for me to eat—her toy mouse. I thanked her for her kindness.
Comment by Colorado Transplant — September 13, 2008 @ 9:09 pm
My cat, Holly, sniffs at the dark chocolate I eat sometimes, as if to say that she would really like to try it. I don’t think so.
My other cat, Megan, tries to eat the dark color plastic shopping bags, if she can get to them. I have to keep them away from her completely. Wonder what’s in them that attracts her?
Comment by Marcy — September 13, 2008 @ 11:10 pm
I’ve had abyssinians for the last 20+ years. So far there isn’t much they won’t try. Bentley loved to share my artichoke if I would hold the leaf. Chili, maple syrup, pizza, and just about anything else. While abys are often known for eating cantaloupe, mine have preferred honeydew or watermelon. Ben tried the quiche and brownies sitting on the stove to cool. I’ve learned that no food can sit out, cooling items are whisked in to the micro for their own safety. My current aby has carried apples, bananas and tomatoes to me to share with her. Veggies and fruits have to be hidden in a cupboard or a kettle with a lid.
Comment by Moira — September 14, 2008 @ 12:12 pm
My kitten is completely disinterested in catnip, but stole a shred of lettuce from an unattended plate and proceeded to munch his way through it.
Comment by Alex — September 15, 2008 @ 2:05 am
Kasey will eat just about anything. Two of the more interesting are bananas and houseflies.
Comment by Lori — September 15, 2008 @ 5:54 am
Oh and this past Easter he managed to find and devour a 60z hollow chocolate Easter bunny. That was scary, but it was milk chocolate and the vet said he’d probably throw up but be fine. He seemed to suffer no ill effects at all, though. Bad dog. :O)
Comment by Lori — September 15, 2008 @ 5:55 am
Jack (cat) loves green cocktail olives, which I use in martinis. When he hears the ice and the cocktail shaker, he appears for his olives. He apparently doesn’t care for the pimientos and leaves them behind on the floor.
Comment by Needles — September 15, 2008 @ 6:54 am
My dog loves food, but the 2 oddest things are she won’t eat plain rice unless you mix it with a tiny bit of something else and she likes pickled ginger. And she’ll steal and peel her own bananas if they are left on the counter.
Comment by kb — September 16, 2008 @ 12:41 am
Mine loves fruit more than meat. He just wolfed down two whole peaches. It has to be sweet; he will eat organic, vine-ripened tomatoes but not the average store-bought ones.
Comment by Barbara Saunders — September 17, 2008 @ 6:36 pm
The thing that surprised me is that a dog I’m fostering (Koli) absolutely LOVES wasabi. She’s begged for it a few times when I’ve brought home sushi. The commercial paste is too strong(and full of horseradish) for me so I never ate it. I figured what the heck, I’d let her have a taste and that would be that. She’d learn the hard way. Boy was I wrong!!! She wanted to know where the rest was. LOL. She’s normally good about not begging from me for things she knows I won’t share, one such thing being potato chips. A couple weeks ago I was craving wasabi and just happened to pass by potato chips flavored with wasabi; they came home with me. I didn’t even get the bag open before Koli was sitting at my feet drooling like a St.Bernard (she’s a Husky.) When I opened it she was pulling out all the stops and doing just about every trick in her repertoire and doing her best to be the cutest looking husky in the world. I found the situation too amusing to refuse her one. She’s graciously obedient most of the time and beautifully composed, and the scent of wasabi clearly meant a lot to her. I normally don’t tolerate such types of outlandish displays of disobedience, but this time it was an act of desperation that was as equally amusing that did wonders to cheer me up; I just *had* to reward her efforts to procure one of her favorite foods (despite it being attached to a potato product.) After all, she never crossed the line of etiquette. She didn’t take, steal, or crowd personal boundaries; she was just flamboyantly exuberant. To have captured that moment on video would have been priceless (or maybe not if sent in to AFV ;-) )
Wasabi! The dog likes wasabi! Of all things. *shaking head*
Comment by Crystal in MI — September 20, 2008 @ 2:42 am
Teddy loves anything sweet like cake and cookies(and I thought cats can’t detect sweets). His all time favorite snacks are baked sweet potatoes (but no marshmellows).
Both my cats love gefilte fish (also called g’filthy fish in my house).
And under supervision, I bone from a rack of lamb solicits much feet kicking and wrestling from both kitties.
Comment by 2CatMom — September 24, 2008 @ 1:30 pm
My cat, Philip, is generally pretty sneaky, and is young enough to not have quite figured out yet that I don’t share my food with him. Most of the time he’s easy enough to shoo away when I’m eating, but whenever I have pasta he pulls out all the stops and somehow always ends up with some. I’m not sure why… I would have thought it would be too bland for him or something, but he’s even crazier about pasta than about tuna or salmon.
I do love that he catches flies… I end up with more than my fair share in the house because my window screens don’t fit quite right, but I haven’t had a problem with them in the three months I’ve had Pip. He’ll jump up and catch them in mid-air! He’s quite the hunter!
He also goes crazy when I give the rabbits hay… mind you this is every day, and he still gets a kick out of it. I haven’t seen him actually eat any, but he’ll go in the cage with them and chew on it.
Comment by Alice — September 24, 2008 @ 5:53 pm