The Cat Food Project is my effort to analyze the food preferences of our cats in order to make smarter purchases. Currently we have an older cat who has become extremely picky in his senior years and two young cats who are transitioning to adult food. There are so many brands and flavors of wet cat food that we needed an organized system to collectively track preferences for brands and flavors. The objective is to zero in on a small variety of foods that are collectively palatable to the cats and easy on our budget. Cheap food that doesn't get eaten is no bargain.
Yes, this is really real. Actual data, actual cats. Prior to building this in Drupal, I was keeping a written log of how much each cat liked each food. I also documented the leftovers in each bowl with photographs. I may add the bowl photos to the site at a later date.
We have three SureFeed Microchip Pet Feeders, and each feeder has a lid that will open only for its designated cat as identified by his or her microchip implant. This assures that gluttons cannot eat everyone's food, and slow eaters can dine at their leisure. The lid also keeps the food fresher and prevents wet cat food odor from wafting all around the house. A bit pricey, but highly recommended for multi-cat households.
Surprisingly enough, this has not been the case with our cats. While quickly swapping dry food does seem to cause some stomach issues, switching between brands and flavors of wet foods is generally tolerated quite well. In fact, our older cat prefers a variety of wet foods. Occasionally a new wet food will trigger a digestive upset in one cat, but that's been rare, and I note it in the log. I suspect that a healthy variety of food helps maintain a healthy gut microbiome. Supplement occasionally with FortiFlora, and all is (usually) well. Bear in mind, this is just our experience with these particular cats. Always consult with your veterinarian before embarking on a smorgasbord.
The Cat Food Project is built on this Drupal 11 website using just two content types (Cat, Cat Food), two taxonomy vocabularies associated with Cat Food (Flavor, Brand) and a variety of pages generated by the Views module to produce the tables and graphs. The ratings for each food are collected in a Paragraph type on the Cat Food content type, which has an entity reference back to the reviewing cat.
No, it's not feeding time yet. Settle down.