Why Your Cat Never Finishes Its Food Bowl

When it comes to food, cats can be notoriously picky. If your feline companion seems to turn up its nose at meals it used to pounce on, this simple trick could change the game..

Des expériences révélatrices

To investigate the mechanisms behind this picky behavior in felines, researchers recruited 12 domestic cats and deprived them of meals for 16 hours. After this fasting period, the animals were successively offered six “dishes.”

When the bowls contained exactly the same food, the cats ate less with each serving, each lasting ten minutes, even though they were clearly hungry. A greater variety led to higher food intake. This trend was reinforced by an experiment involving five identical dishes and a sixth that differed.

The authors of the study, published in the journal Physiology & Behavior, found that the mere smell of a new food triggered a significant increase in intake, even when the meals presented were the same. “The premature cessation of feeding in domestic cats is closely linked to olfactory factors rather than to mere physiological satiety,” they write.

Known as “specific sensory satiety,” a similar phenomenon had previously been documented in humans. Brain-scan analyses linked it to a decrease in the activation of reward circuits in the orbitofrontal cortex, and thus to a loss of pleasure.

Racines évolutives

Although the exact mechanisms at play remain unclear at this stage, researchers point to distant evolutionary roots. While dogs, descendants of wolves who evolved in packs, tend to overeat, cats eat smaller portions at regular intervals, which may reflect the feeding pattern of their wild, solitary ancestors known for consuming small prey several times a day.

Thus, breaking this olfactory conditioning by introducing novel foods could help a cat that has lost weight, especially following illness, quickly regain body condition and vitality, while also significantly curbing food intake in a overweight animal.

Previously, researchers had revealed the best way to grab a cat’s attention.