Last night, to avoid fussing with dinner, I brought home a packaged, prepared salad. It was labeled “chicken and bacon Caesar.” All the ingredients were in separate little plastic compartments.

I mixed the bacon and hardboiled eggs in with the lettuce and added some tomatoes, but I balked at the small, neat cubes of pale, pinkish so-called chicken. They just looked unwholesome to me. So I skipped them.

I live in a very catly neighborhood, so last night I left a little bowl with the chicken cubes on the porch, figuring that one of my many feline neighbors would pass through in the night and find a treat.

This morning they were still there, untouched.

What, if anything, does this tell us about the pale, super-processed-looking little chicken dice, that the cats wouldn’t eat them? when they do eat even canned cat food?

I shudder to think.

Topics: cats, chicken, cat food, processed meats, instinctive aversion