Why does my kitten like to eat such weird things?

Your kitty isn’t alone in this strange habit. I had a cat that would eat bread & goldfish crackers. My grandfather had a cat that ate popcorn with him while they watched Unsolved Mysteries together. My current cat tries to eat the tinsel hanging from the Christmas tree. I’ve caught her with a tiny piece of tinsel hanging out her mouth… I pulled on it & the long strand just kept coming. She had swallowed about 6 inches of the tinsel. I’ve seen her chew on plastic bags & cardboard boxes, trying to tear a piece off to swallow.

I guess for a creature who gnaws on the innards of a still breathing field mouse without batting an eye… a nibble of junk food doesn’t seem so bad. No idea why my kitty enjoys my food & the occasional shiny object, but I let her have her fun.

Do you have any kitty treats? (friskies, whisker lickins) Maybe giving the kitty a light nosh throughout the day will keep her from being a little food critic hellion. :)

Mouse is sooo adorable by the way.

Haha, I had a tinsel eating cat, too! You’re lucky you found it hanging out of her mouth… we found it hanging out the other end. Ewww.

I do have treats, but haven’t given any for a while. I just forgot about them, I guess. I’ll try to be more consistent. :)

We call our cat ‘carb cat’. He LOVES chips, mashed potato, toast… (we haven’t had any of that for a while so he must be feeling very deprived). He also likes dog treats… oh and chocolate cake. It was my husband’s birthday and the cat was trying to get into the dishwasher to get the cake off the plates. He is odd.

My current cat simply loves eating French Fries on the rare occasions when I get them. But so fae that’s the extent of her food weirdness. Shes not really that much of a people food beggar. If I’m having chicken or hamburger, ill offer her some and shell take a few bites but quickly loses interest.

But my (dearly departed) Velvet was an absolute foodaholic. She would constantly be begging for food and and would sit there watching intently each bite of food I took. Shed follow it Dr the plate up to my mouth for every single bite turning her head each time as if watching a tennis match.

My theory is that since the ASPCA. Had picked her up as a stray, that she never forgot her time on the mean streets of big city Philly where pickings must have been slim for food. All that deprivation must have left its mark as she was extremely skinny when I first got her home from the shelter.

As long as it was people food, she wanted it. Shed even eat vegetables (tomato and lettuce even) as long as a human being was eating it, she wanted some.

But nothing beats my Funny Face for weird. Whenever I brought home plastic bags she would lick them for the longest time until the “newness” wore off. Fortunately she didn’t eat them, just licking, over and over again. And weirder yet, she much preferred the older style ones rather than the newer style biodegradable ones. Nowadays, the biodegradable ones are pretty much all there is, but years ago that wasn’t the case. And whenever i brought home any of the old style plasticky smelling ones, she was in ecstasy.

One of the theories about animals (or young children) eating strange stuff is that they’re trying to compensate for some element missing in their diet. But I cant imagine a deficiency of chloroflourocarbons being the trigger for her mad bag-licking frenzies (since thats what the old style bags had the most of compared to the newer biodegradables :)

But, I just chalk it up to the simple fact that cats are idiosyncratic and weird little creatures of magic and mystery and all their little quirks just make them more endearing.

:D

BTW Mouse is just adorable. She should grow up into a gorgeous looking cat. It looks like shes a medium or long hair so her coat should fill out nicely.

And the pic of the chewed out bag is ample proof of how appropriately named she is :) it certainly looks as if you have mice.

How old is she?

Maybe she thinks you are the mother cat and thus gets imprinted by any food you bring her.

Kitty PIKA? My cat Difford, who is no longer among the living, would eat butter if I were remiss enough to leave a stick out on the counter, and my daughter’s cat used to eat dill pickles and would slurp up the juice if we let her. I just attributed it to individual likes and dislikes. But Difford also liked to play spin-the-kitty, so she may not have been right in the head.

I know nothing about dietary quirks in cats, I just wanted to say that I think Mouse is absolutely adorable.

Maybe your regular cooking is so bad she doesn’t notice?

@rpm_pseud0name Please, please don’t have tinsel if your cat eats it. Cats can and do die from eating tinsel. Is it worth your cat’s death to have tinsel on your tree?

@augustlan, I’ve had cats who liked tomoatoes, oranges (so weird for a cat!), and coffee. I suspect they have different tastes just as we do. It must be awful to get only variations on one type of food for a lifetime.

Maybe Mouse is a mouse? [a cute one, of course]
She’s also a baby. Babies will stick all kinds of things in their mouths to taste test. Just one more sense to explore things with. And when she likes it, she keeps going . . .
Better watch her, too many carbs and she’ll be a fat cat.

I give my darlin’s all kinds of cat candy, some occasional fancy Fancy Feast meals that have vegetables and sauces with the salmon or whatever—green lids—too expensive for everyday.

Also I just “happen” to drop some chip crumbs [they love the crunch and the salt] and never quite finish the last bit of cereal milk or yoghurt and put the bowl on the floor. To my surprise, when I switched to coconut milk, my Jilly slurped that up too.

Isn’t fun to talk about cats? I’ve had a half dozen or so, but not one ate anything strange as far as I know. They could go outside anytime they wanted to, so I didn’t keep close track of their diet. I do know they hunted, because they brought in mice, rats, gophers, moles and a couple birds, alive, for us to share. But that’s another story.

@Buttonstc She was one of several kittens that a feral cat in our neighborhood had, so you may be on to something about the scavenger instinct. I forgot to mention she eats lettuce, too. And my other cat, Chance, is a huge plastic bag licker! Cats are so weird! Lovely, but undeniably weird. :)

Thanks for letting me know I’m not alone, everyone!

List of things my cats have eaten:
Chocolate
Bread
Nan bread
Curry
Coconut
Cheese
Paper
Grass
Feathers
Pillow stuffing
Coco pops
Nuts (cashew nuts)
Crisps (potato chips in the USA)
Cucumber