I’m off again to the Rugby Scrum, otherwise known as the Indian consulate. To end the day, we must again have a cat, this one nomming some candy.
The affinity of this cat for a lollipop (we Americans call them “suckers”) is mysterious to me, because, as you all should know, cats have no sweet receptors and so can’t taste sugar. Maybe there’s something else in the sweet that attracts Patton:
The YouTube notes:
My cat Patton loves to lick and gnaw on lollipops. He will eat an entire sucker in less than 5 minutes!
I don’t know what breed this is, but it looks Siamese-y. WARNING: Can we please do without comments saying, “Eating that is bad for the cat”? Perhaps it’s true, but I have no control over what Patton’s staff feeds its master.
I know that cats aren’t supposed to have sweet receptors, but I have known several cats that loved vanilla ice cream while not being very fond of milk.
The several anecdotes related here suggests that this may not be a universal.
Wasn’t there something a while ago about d*g genetics showing that domesticated dogs have acquired additional starch-digesting genes compared to their sibling group wolves?
Could something similar be happening with hoomin selection on puddy-tats? Not so intense, because cats are much less domesticated compared to d*gs ; not so complete a control of the cat’s diet by the hoomins. But something along the lines of finding and selecting a sweettaste gene?
We also called them suckers where I grew up. In Durban, in South Africa. Indian consulate here in a London is also a scrum. Love India. Long form to fill in. Very expensive. Worth it! 😄
In South Africa I’ve only heard referred to them as ‘stokkie lekker’ (but I didn’t stay in Durbs), which might be translated as ‘little stick tasting good’.
The word ‘lekker’ has a primary meaning of tasting good, but has gotten a much wider meaning, like anything pleasing to the senses, ‘lekker’ music, a ‘lekker’ party and, of course, in sexual connotations.
‘Lollies’ are ‘worms’ of sweetened, dried and compressed fruit here.
Which leaves the question, if true that cats cannot taste sweet, why so many of them like sweets. What else is there in a lollipop? (aka sucker or stokkielekker).
Note, ‘lekker’ is undoubtedly etymologically related to the verb ‘to lick’.
I’ve been an American all my life (New Yorker) and I’ve never actually heard anyone call a “lollipop” a “sucker” in real life. Maybe it’s a Midwest thing.
In Canada (Ontario at least) we call them both suckers & lollipops. It’s funny because Canadians and Americans near the US-Can border tend to use similar words. There are, for instance, Americans who call “soda”, “pop”.
I’m from Connecticut. We called them “lollipops,” except for those giant ones–they were called “all-day suckers.”
This Canuck-living Yank has always called them lollipops – and soft drinks, pop. Lived on both coasts while in the U.S.
Maybe you’re fancy. “Lollipops” I was considered more polite than “suckers”.
That should be, “I always considered”. My eyes are bad today for some reason. Time to turn up the screen brightness or something!
Never thought of the fanciness aspect. Doubt that’s it. And then the Brits call ( called?) popsicles ice-lollies…
call
In Manitoba (central Canada) I can’t say I recall anyone saying lollipop, it’s always suckers. I’ll ask the children I know, see what they say.
Fuzzy, who passed away earlier this year at the age of 21, had two vices: Dr. Pepper and blueberry popsicles. He was completely uninterested in any other soda or popsicle flavor. But if you left a glass of Dr. Pepper unattended, you’d return to find Fuzzy with his face down in the glass lapping it up. Display a blueberry popsicle and he was all over you until you let him finish it off like the kitty in this video.
I don’t know what receptors were involved. But they certainly had an effect on our beloved Fur Ball.
And, also, too: Out here in the West, we call them suckers. Don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone refer to them as lollipops except on screen or in advertisements.
Patton? Trying to work out if that is a bad pun or just a what a Staff Officer would call their boss.
Surely “his guts and our blood”?
meanwhile, the fish is happily swimming in its tank, knowing that Patton is a “sucker” for a lollipop . . . argh
That cat has nice humans. I just finished telling my dog a couple of days ago that she couldn’t have the maple leaf syrup sucker because I wasn’t going to hold it all day while she licked it. 😀
Sub
We had to protect the pumpkin pie from our cats.Our lstest likes brownies.
I can’t leave pumkin pie unattended or Orson will help himself to it.
It could be the texture: a girlfriend in college fed her cat Vaseline for hairball management and that kitty lapped it up like mad. Maybe some cats like slippery slimy textures.
There are other ingredients in hard candy besides sugar/corn syrup: BHT, glycerine, dyes, ascorbic acid, artifical flavors – could there be something in those that activates the umami receptor? And/or a mutation that makes receptors activate?
My boring old cats just eat what I give them and what they hunt down in the yard.
My cat begs for Vaseline sometimes.
Also, when I was a little kid, I had a cat that loved toffee.
[This’ll get some disgusted comments.]
Our Jackie would love a fingertip of Marmite.
Cue the Vegemite/Marmite and love/hate religious wars in 3 … 2 … 1 …
I’ve read the Marmite/Vegemite debates here before, but never had the pleasure of trying them.
How does the taste/smell compare with, say, shrimp paste or Solomon Gundy, or that stinky Asian/Chinese salted fish which tastes amazing when steamed on top or rice or steamed with ground pork? Nothing can match the pungency of the latter. Can’t eat that salty stuff anymore anyway.
*never had the pleasure of trying out these products* 🙂
Think OXO cubes.
That’s not so bad then. “Umame” springs to mind. I did read that you can use Marmite to make broth. I think I’d stick with OXO cubes and water and dash in some veggies. 🙂
Btw, if you’ve never had it, Diana, Solomon Gundy is one of the best things on the planet. Here’s a recipe for it, though it’s available in jars in many shops.
http://www.jamaican-recipes.com/solomon-a-gundy.html
That does sound good.
Shrimp paste – nothing like I’ve ever seen labelled shrimp. I can’t remember the last time I ate shrimp, but I can remember the last time I ate Marmite (a couple of months ago – need a new jar) and Vegemite (in Tanzania in 2004).I don’t recognise either of the other descriptions. Isn’t Solomon Gundy a folk song?
In NZ the flat ones are lollipops and the spherical ones are suckers.
As for the Indian consulate:
Population NZ: c. 4,500,000
Population India: c. 1,252,000,000
Yet NZ has more diplomats/embassies/consulates etc than India.
I don’t know, but Orson really, really likes cherry flavored stuff even without being able to taste sweetness. Because of that I cannot buy anything cherry flavored if I don’t want to share it with him. He might lick a lollipop too if cherry flavored and offered, but he’d probably prefer ice cream or yogurt to candy.
Interesting. The chemical basis of cherry flavor is amygdalin which is also the source of bitter almond flavor. Fun fact: amygdalin is the compound once sold as the quack cancer “cure” laetrile.
It would be interesting to know if Orson likes marzipan.
I could try to offer him some. I don’t know how much smell plays into the attraction for him though, so it’s hard to say if the lack of the cherry smell will put him off marzipan.
Orson declined marzipan, despite several offerings. He licked it a few times, but was more interested in having he cheeks scratched than nomming candy.
I was hoping for:
Uh one,
Uh two-whooooooo,
Uh three,
*CRUNCH*…
Uh three.
chuckle 🙂
I have a question, but I dare not to ask…
We had two DSH tomcats who were from the same litter, Ben and Jerry. At Halloween, we discovered they loved the pumpkin “guts” from inside the Jack-o-Lantern. Ben would eat the goopy mess until we took it away, then he would yowl and complain the rest of the day. They never displayed any other interest in vegetable matter or any other unusual dietary habits. I haven’t known a cat since who was interested in pumpkin goop.
Jerry, unfortunately, died of an unknown disease at a young age; but Ben lived to 14, and every year we had a pumpkin for him at Halloween.
I’ve read that pumpkin is good for many aspects of your health, and studies *suggest* it might help to reduce blood glucose levels and possibly diabetes. Some animals seem to go for stuff that they need. One of my dogs surprisingly liked bitter melon, especially when she became diabetic. Of course I was never sure what was going on there.
Where I come from in Saint Louis, most people call the flat disc ones suckers and the roughly spherical ones lollipops.
My cat has has a fondness for several different types of fruits, especially strawberries. If I have a bowl of strawberries while on the couch, she will start licking them as soon as she thinks I’m not looking.
Celery and Burt’s Bees Lip Balm both have a catnip like effect on her, which means that occasionally during the dry winter, I will be woken up by a cat sniffing or even attacking my lips.