Answer:
The feline nose guides blind, deaf newborn kittens to their first meal. They return to the same nipple each time by scent memory. By day four of a kitten’s life, “paw treading” is used to stimulate milk flow. If not properly weaned, cats tend to continue treading throughout life. Teeth erupt at two to three weeks of age. At four to five weeks, kittens can begin solid food.

Smell is important to taste. Cats recognize four basic tastes: sour, bitter, salty, and sweet – the weakest of the four. Food temperature is important to cats. They are hunters not scavengers so a warm meal is more natural for a cat than a cold one. Warming a meal to roughly body temperature increases acceptance.

Kittens develop taste and shape preferences to food early. Therefore, introducing a variety of food shapes and tastes before six months of age can help prevent a finicky eater. A food-variety-mechanism to balance diet in the wild can stop working for a cat on a “regular” diet, causing a cat to refuse a change.

Other reasons your cat may stop eating include: overfed the previous meal, hot weather, location preference, in season, or alternate source of food found – fresh rat anyone?

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