VINTAGE Kitty!!

We are back home at the moment.. Husby is getting washer all hooked up and I have a few minutes to share with you this really cute article I found!!

For nearly as far back as humankind has kept dogs and cats as pets, these dear companions were either left to fend for themselves when meal time came around or provided with scraps/less desirable pieces of human food.

Evidently this approach was enough to keep both species alive as a whole, yet as the Victorian era progressed, the view on pet food gradually began to change with the introduction of the first commercially prepared dog and cat food (both of which the brand Spratt was a driving force of in the late 1800s).

Though today many people might argue that some of the ingredients in the first moist pet foods were shockingly unpleasant to think about (e.g., horse meat), the availability of store bought cat and dog food meant that pet owners could now take the task of feeding their pets out of those very animals’ hands (paws) and into their own, thus helping to cut down on the malnutrition and poor health that sometimes arose when pets were left to hunt/scavenge for their food themselves.

By the mid-twentieth century canned cat food was available in various seafood flavours, such as the tuna fish variety offered up by the brand Purr during the 1950s in the charming advertisement image below.

{Darling 1950s illustrated Purr cat food ad via hmdavid on Flickr – don’t you just love the cute slogan (“the Catillac of pet foods”) at the bottom?}

It was around this same time that dry cat food (aka, kibble) began to emerge on the market, following in the footsteps of dry dog kibble and biscuits, both of which had been around for a few decades (particularly biscuits), as brands that are now household names like Purina started manufacturing their well know pet food products.

Over the decades that followed more and more varieties (and one might argue, in the case of some brands at least, better quality) of cat food - both wet and dry - started hitting grocery and pet store shelves, including (but in no way limited to) beef, chicken, turkey, lamb, salmon, mixed seafood, and surf & turf versions.

Cats and their owners are spoiled for choice these days, which an especially good thing if you have a finicky eater like our precious Ms. Stella, who's partial to poultry flavours of pate and finely diced/minced varieties of canned cat food, as well as dry poultry centered kibble and treats. Initially, as a wee little kitten she was adverse to seafood (save for boneless, skinless canned salmon), but as she's grown up, I've been able to introduce a couple of wet seafood based cat foods into her routine without much in the way of an objection.

While I'm all for a great many elements of days gone past,

I'm thankful for the progression (including a good understanding of proper feline nutrition) in pet food that the world has seen in the last century and highly suspect that Stella (who got a very generous sized portion of her favourite chicken pate cat food on her adoption anniversary) is too!

Just thought this was adorable!!

xoxo

K Jaggers

♥