This is something that seems odd to me.

I was brought up, with the stereotypical cartoon image of the cat licking it's lips and the bones still in the shape of a fish and the cat looking very smug. Now try as we may, we cannot get our cat to eat fish, she goes mad at the smell, in fact she would almost take your hand off, but once she has some in her mouth, thats it, no more appetite. Before she had her one and only kitten, about 3 years ago, Pushkin, would eat anything, why not now?

I can't answer your question, but I can add the quirks of our own cat, who loves spinach and weetabix, eats all kinds of baby food (perhaps jealous of baby getting attention?) and would do anything for chicken. Yes, he eats fish, but it's chicken he'll go all out to rob, beg, steal or otherwise appropriate.

Is it any fish, what about a nice piece of smoked salmon or some prawns or lobster?

I have two cats, the youngest one is fourteen and goes by the name of Henry. Henry was the kitten of my own cat and was raised with his brother. Even in the nest he refused to eat commercial cat food, wouldn't be weaned until I gave him raw minced steak. He insisted on fresh food, cooked or raw, meat, offal, fish (I always cooked that) - just don't bother with anything tinned. He will now eat the dried food which I buy from the vet but has cost me a fortune over the years in food. The other cat eats tinned stuff, no problem.

Is fish a natural food for cats? Certainly most of the commercial stuff isn't natural for them, chicken, beef, kidneys, liver, lamb - when was the last time you saw a cat killing a sheep to eat?

All I can be thankful for is that Henry is getting older, at fourteen he has stopped killing and eating rabbits and mice, not that I minded him being natural but I didn't approve of him eating them on the kitchen floor and leaving me with the mess and leftovers.

Edited to add that his litter brother, Charlie (sadly dead now) adored strawberry icecream and grated cheese, just not on the same plate (at least I didn't put them together, perhaps he would have still loved them).

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what about a nice piece of smoked salmon or some prawns or lobster

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That cat would be eating better than me!

How else are you supposed to get them to take pills if you don't wrap them in smoked salmon? As for prawns, Henry will rip my hand off. Yeah, I confess to giving him crab and lobster at times, more often crab than lobster it has to be said.

One of mine would kill for mushrooms, raw.
The other has eaten the same supermarket brand of tuna for all of her 15 years.
I would imagine that something traumatic happened to your cat which put her off fish.
After all it happens to humans. A crazy night on the tiles put me off gin for life
I can't bear it near me now.

Our cat was the same way about fish. He'd be very interested in it when we were at the table, but if we put some in his dish, he'd sniff at it and turn up his little nose at it.

I wonder if the cat's pickiness about food isn't a survival instinct. I mean, I used to hate purchasing a big bunch of the food on sale that he was enjoying only to find him refuse to eat it. We tried to hold out for a day or so, but the stuff looked horrible.

French cat food is like French people food, you have to see it to believe it. The menus are made up so the cat doesn't eat the same thing twice in a week. But ours didn't care for fish either.

Two of our cats eat canned tuna in water; it must be in water not vegetable oil. They wait impatiently every morning for me to put the pot of coffee on and then open the tuna can. The other cat is indifferent to tuna.

The two older cats will hound me (is hound the right word?) for raw chicken. I swear that they can smell it even when frozen. They do snag a finch (related to chicken) in the yard now and then and eat the victim in the garage. I get to clean up the beak, feet and feathers.

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How else are you supposed to get them to take pills if you don't wrap them in smoked salmon?

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There is a thing called a "pill pusher." It looks like a long syringe and you put the pill the cat is supposed to take in it, you grab the cat, stick the pusher in his/her mouth, and shoot. Then you rub the cat's throat to ease the pill down. Of course, you can always give the cat his/her pills by hand, but then the cat could bite your hand. I'm lucky, as my cat doesn't mind when I have to give him meds by hand...he seems to know that I am making him better.

As for why a cat won't eat fish...some cats go through stages. They can go for days or years without wanting fish. Fish are high in taurine, which is needed for a cat's eyesight and to make the cat balanced. When a cat goes "off" fish, I would take it that that means the cat knows it has too much taurine in his/her system. Other cat foods contain taurine, so when the cat goes off fish, they are still getting this much needed nutrient.

Of course, there is another reason why some cats do not like fish...as with some people who don't like fish, maybe the cats don't like it and never required a taste for it. Especially if their mothers didn't eat fish when they were pregnant. I read in the "Cornell Book of Cats" that kittens will like what their mother ate during pregnancy. This seems to be true, because 16 years ago, my white cat's mother ate scrambled eggs and macaroni and cheese, and my cat, even to this day, loves eggs and macaroni and cheese. Whereas the litter I rescued in the summertime, their mother ate nothing but canned cat food, all varieties, but more fish than other kinds, and the kittens all love fish.

My .02 cents!

Lisa

I think fish IS a natural food for cats, or as natural as any food is really for a long-domesticated species. My mother had a siamese cat that used to "fish" in the creek behind the house, using it's claws to spear minnows. She never ate the fish herself that my mother remembers, she only fished when she was feeding her kittens.

If I was a cat and I need a pill ... I'll take Sue's method thanks!

Stop me if I have told this one before...
It happened before the days of pill pushers, and also before the days when one could afford smoked salmon.
We had to give the cat a pill. Each time we tried, she growled and scratched. My husband held her while I tried. No luck, she growled and scratched more. We wrapped her in a towel and held tight, we tried every way to get the damned thing into her mouth. In the end she struggled free. The pill was still on the floor where it had fallen in the struggle. She calmly walked over, sniffed it and ate it.

Typical flaming cat, perverse creatures.

The cat would have needed more than pills if it had done that to me!

(oh please, I'm kidding!)