Why would my cat seem to prefer 'liquid' food?
My cat does like his wet food but seems to particularly enjoy the liquid part of the food. He'll lick all of the jelly or gravy from the food first before eating any of the meat or fish chunks and sometimes will leave quite a lot of the meat behind but never leaves any liquid or jelly. Has anyone else found this with their cat?
Perhaps this is because he gets unlimited amounts of dry food too and needs a fair amount of liquid to compensate. He does have a water fountain with a pump and filter which gets emptied out and refilled every few days which he seems to use regularly too. I don't see any signs that he's overweight or overeating.
Why would my cat seem to prefer the liquid from 'wet' cat food?
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Gelatin is added to canned meat products to absorb juices and help retain structure and definition to the product during sterilization. There's a lot of tasty goodness from a feline perspective, especially with lots of fats in the mix. Being an avid cook, I like to refer to "fat" as being an acronym for "flavor and texture" for a reason: it has them.
You're unlikely to find a food with increased amounts of it, given the purpose I described, but it is important that your cat also eats the main portions of the food too. There are necessary nutrients there and so I would probably leave well-enough alone and let him enjoy the little treat at the start.
In the wild, cats get most of their moisture from prey -- if you've watched how inefficient drinking is for a cat this'll come as no surprise. The housecat breed is descended from desert cats, which may help explain this.
So wet food really is better for them, in some ways.
There are "in gravy" catfoods which mine like -- though they'll extract all the gravy and only eat the chunks as an afterthought if they get hungry later. I try to give them this as a treat every other day or so, to supplement the dry kibble. My vet would like wet food to be a bigger part of their diet despite the dental concerns; I'm working on it.
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