Think Your Cat Is Picky? New Study Says There’s More to It

If your cat is a picky eater, it might be because they're bored of the same food, according to new research.

A new study published in the journal Physiology & Behavior explored why some felines become disinterested in their food bowl.

To get to the bottom of this issue, researchers conducted several cat feeding experiments.

“I keep five dogs at home, and they tend to eat their food very quickly. In contrast, when I feed the cats used in our research, they eat slowly and often leave some food behind,” study co-author Masao Miyazaki, an animal behavior researcher at Iwate University in Japan, told Gizmodo. “At one point, I became very curious about this difference, which led me to start this research.”

To figure out what motivates cats to chow down, Miyazaki and his colleagues observed 12 cats as they ate six commercially available dry foods. In the experiments, the felines fasted for 16 hours and were then presented with food for 10 minutes followed by a 10-minute interval with an empty bowl. That was repeated five times.

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When given the same food for all six cycles, the felines ate less during the successive feeding rounds. But when offered a different meal each time, the animals ate more total food across all six sessions compared with the cycles using the same food.

The same thing happened when cats could simply smell a new food while eating, even though they were fed the same repetitive meal.

“These findings suggest that cats do not stop eating simply because they are full,” Miyazaki said in a statement. “Rather, their feeding motivation decreases as they become accustomed to the smell of the food, and it can be restored by introducing a new odor. Sensory novelty, especially olfactory novelty, can reactivate feeding motivation in cats.”

Researchers said that these findings could help inform feeding strategies for cats with reduced appetite, improve nutritional management for aging or sick cats, and support the development of pet foods.