Why does my cat always leave behind food, and refuse to eat it later when combined with new food?
I'm not overfeeding...
I'm not giving my cat more than she can eat, but rather she seems adamant to leave behind her food.
After several days, she will end up with an oversupply of left-overs.
Its not the bowl or comfort issues...
I initially researched it, and I thought perhaps she did not like her wiskers touching the side of the bowl -- hence she would not eat from the fringes of the bowl.
Perhaps she is spoiled...
That was not the case. I tried bunching her food together to the middle of the bowl and topping it off with a very small amount of new food, perhaps "tricking" her into thinking the whole pile was new.
She seems to reject anything that was previously a left-over, and there is no tricking her.
It seems likely she is sensing something by smell that I am not fully grasping.
She is possibly making health decisions, and her food is not good in her eyes...
The food is "Friskies" and I had switched to fish-based ingredients when I was told her poultry-based food was causing a rash that she had (I had been inspecting it's cause for a year or so)
The only thing I can surmise, based on what I know of my cat, is she is instinctively rejecting portions of her food based on her own sensitivities.
But how do I know for sure? Is this common cat behavior?
I'd like to stop wasting food as well as get to the bottom of this issue.
An extra note...
My wife and I have a cute little feud over this. She says I spoil her, whereas I think the cat is probably having a real problem I don't understand. Yet on that "spoiling" level, if I ever cook fish she is extremely interested in our meal and begs a great deal. Of course I feed her the fish!
Spoiled kitty? Malnourished kitty? Deranged kitty?