Your cat cannot taste sweetness — and never could

Offer a cat a spoonful of ice cream and it may well lick it. But not for the sugar. Cats are the one group of mammals known to be effectively blind to sweet taste.

The reason sits in their DNA. Sweet taste in mammals depends on a receptor built from two proteins. In cats, the gene for one of those parts is broken — a pseudogene, a piece of genetic text with typos that make it unreadable. Researchers documented this in the early 2000s, and it holds across the cat family, from the moggy on your sofa to the lion.

It makes sense for an obligate carnivore. A hunter living on mice and birds has little use for detecting ripe fruit. What cats are exquisitely tuned to instead are amino acids and fats — the flavours of meat.

"Cats aren't fussy. They're reading a different menu entirely."

Why it matters at the food bowl: if your cat goes mad for a dairy dessert or a bit of cake, it's chasing the fat and texture, not the sugar. That's worth knowing, because sweet human foods bring calories, lactose many adult cats digest poorly, and sometimes ingredients they shouldn't have at all.

It also explains the classic fussy eater. Temperature, aroma and fat content move a cat far more than anything we'd call tasty. Warming food slightly to body temperature often does more than switching brand again.

If your cat suddenly stops eating, though, don't experiment for long. More than 24 hours without food is a genuine reason to call your vet. 🐈