Why does my cat love this paleo pancake mix?

September 26, 2018 5:41 PM

My cat is obsessed with the Birch Benders Paleo pancake mix. Why? What is in this?

He will take an opened bag out of the cupboard and roll around with it. He eats it once he gets it open. A sealed, unopened bag is safe. Yes I bought two to experiment with, in case it was something in the ink on the bag.

Ingredients are: cassava starch, organic coconut flour, almond flour, eggs, leavening (monocalcium phosphate, sodium bicarbonate), salt, monk fruit, spice.

Some of these ingredients like coconut flour and almond flour and eggs I have around the house normally and he doesn’t care. I left a prepared one on the counter when I left the house today and he ate half of it. It seems like the mix is more irresistible.

Here is proof.

posted by jeweled accumulation to Pets & Animals (25 answers total)

Best answer: I fear this may be yet another example of "cats are weird"...
posted by The otter lady at 6:54 PM on September 26, 2018 [5 favorites]

Best answer: My sister (who has some black cats a lot like yours) says "my best guess is that it’s the monk fruit. some cats go nutso for melon. monk fruit is a tiny little melon. so... likely that’s why the fuzz is into it.... possible it’s also the *packaging*, not the paleo pancake mix." Maybe it crinkles in some cat-pleasing way?
posted by jessamyn at 6:54 PM on September 26, 2018 [6 favorites]

To add a couple data points: I offered an opened package of this pancake mix to my two cats to sniff just now and they did not seem terribly impressed by it. Maybe it is just unusually appealing to your cat?
posted by Oliva Porphyria at 6:55 PM on September 26, 2018 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Athlete vote for cats are weird. Maybe black cats are especially weird? After a decade on this earth one of mine has just developed a love for toothpaste. Another one goes crazy licking plastic bags (which oddly enough is actually pretty common in cats??)

If i had to guess... is it on the eggy smelling side maybe? Some cats like eggs.
posted by cgg at 7:54 PM on September 26, 2018 [4 favorites]

My cat goes cuckoo for coconut. Coconut flour, coconut flakes, coconut milk, coconut butter.... The answer to your question is “because cats are weird.”
posted by matildaben at 8:38 PM on September 26, 2018 [2 favorites]

Our two cats don't care about this mix. We make it all the time.
posted by slidell at 9:29 PM on September 26, 2018

Cats love fats.
posted by Violet Hour at 12:15 AM on September 27, 2018 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Another vote for cats are weird and individual cats are weird about individual things. My childhood cat, Scibbles, would go insane over the "wintergreen" smell of Ben-Gay. I don't think I've heard of any other cat going apeshit over Ben-Gay...
posted by kuanes at 4:36 AM on September 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Had a cat who used to stalk me round the house for chickpeas. Loved them to bits, would steal them off my plate if he could.

Cats are just nuts.
posted by Jilder at 5:33 AM on September 27, 2018 [2 favorites]

My in-law's cats LOVE coconut too. If I put on coconut oil after a bath, they'd lick it off. If I put it in my hair, they'd bite my hair.

My neighbour's cat also loved eggs.
posted by Ms. Moonlight at 6:12 AM on September 27, 2018

Best answer: Yeah I had a cat who was really well behaved around people food with the exception of avocado, which apparently is the tastiest fat ever. We had an avocado tree in our LA yard which rained down fruit that would smash on the stone walkways, to her delight. She loll around drunk on the 'cado and fall asleep with green slime on her face from rooting her nose into it. Later, after we left, an avocado pit in the trash can was the only thing she'd go after. She once shoved aside an entire chicken carcass, holding it aside with her paw, to use her teeth to extract the avocado pit that lay beneath.
posted by carmicha at 6:19 AM on September 27, 2018 [15 favorites]

Best answer: Every evening my cat yowls piteously and every time I move he sprints to the bathroom, desperately hoping that something I do might involve coconut or almond oil so he can then lick me like he's trying to sand me into a ball.
Your product has fat, coconut, and almond...?
Cats, man.
posted by pseudostrabismus at 6:54 AM on September 27, 2018 [4 favorites]

Response by poster: Ok, thank you for reminding me how weird cats are. This is my first cat.

What are we going to do when they stop making this?! I’m sure he’ll live, he loves a wide variety of people food but this he goes particularly nuts for and it’s just so weirdly specific.

He also loves coconut oil and gets excited every time I take a shower. Plain eggs are okay but quiche is his favorite.
posted by jeweled accumulation at 8:54 AM on September 27, 2018

Response by poster: Feel free to keep posting the weird things your cats are into, I love it
posted by jeweled accumulation at 8:56 AM on September 27, 2018 [2 favorites]

Further to the melon hypothesis, we had a cat once that really loved cantaloupe.
posted by exogenous at 10:03 AM on September 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I second jessamyn on the cucurbit hypothesis. One of my childhood cats was a cantaloupe lover. On cats and cantaloupe:

"Volatiles derived from amino acids are major contributors to melon aroma."¹ This sentence from a research study on melon volatiles may hold the key to why so many cats love cantaloupe. To them, it smells like meat. Amino acids are the building blocks of protein. They are what meat is made of. Many of the same amino acids that are in meat are also present in melons, although in much smaller quantities.² We don't know exactly what meat smells like to a cat, but they are hard-wired to be attracted to it and it makes sense that they would be highly sensitive to all of the compounds in meat. The presence of the same volatiles in other foods would naturally interest them.

posted by jocelmeow at 10:52 AM on September 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

My cat loves olives. You can't eat a supreme pizza unless you give her one little olive ring so she can steal it off to the corner and lick it. (She doesn't eat it.)
posted by BrashTech at 11:05 AM on September 27, 2018 [4 favorites]

My two tuxedo cats go ballistic for Kraft Singles Cheese.

One of them eats everything though :( nothing is safe if it is plastic (Our shower curtain for instance), he also loves clothes (most of my husbands T-shirts have holes in them now). He also eats blankets, towel and cushions - he is like an annoying dog.

So we buy him dehydrated chicken feet for him to chew on and he loves them!
posted by JenThePro at 1:01 PM on September 27, 2018 [3 favorites]

Ooh, I had a cat who loved tinned pears. He was a tuxedo baby.
Not food related, but I had an Abyssinian who loved it when you sang happy birthday. Other songs? Eh. Happy birthday, he'd meow VERY loudly, run right up to the person singing, and headbutt them straight in the mouth.
posted by FirstMateKate at 1:36 PM on September 27, 2018 [6 favorites]

One of my cats is millennial....loves avocado and olives.
One of my previous cats loved corn on the cob or even popcorn.
One if my cats lovesvsweets.
One loved plastic bags.
One loved dairy.
One loved spinach.

Cats
posted by mightshould at 5:23 PM on September 27, 2018 [2 favorites]

I have a cat that has a thing for epson salt for baths.
He chews on the containers and is obsessed.

Also vanilla ensure .

Wierd.
posted by AlexiaSky at 6:11 PM on September 27, 2018 [2 favorites]

An orange tabby stray that we adopted once followed me around the room when I was eating, of all things, Doritoes. I finally showed it to him like "see, you don't want it," but he ate it! We never have these, so I've never tried this again. But I later learned that his former owner in the neighborhood called him Cheeto, apparently maybe not just for his color!
posted by slidell at 8:44 PM on September 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

I spilled some granola on the floor once and one of my cats (also black) gobbled it all up like it was cat candy. He also likes extra stiff shower liners to chew on.
posted by ataco at 8:58 PM on September 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

My cousin's cat would crouch on your chest and lick Carmax off of your lips.
posted by BoscosMom at 9:34 PM on October 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

One of my cats loves ice lollies. LOVES THEM. Will stand on your lap and streeeetch out her paw for them whilst you hold it above your head. I have no idea what this is about, since apparently cats can't even taste sweet?

No interest at all in the chicken stock ice cubes I lovingly made them in the summer though. Cats.
posted by stillnocturnal at 4:23 PM on November 23, 2018 [2 favorites]