The case of the Covid cat

"They licked the plate clean of the wet tinned cat food I put down, so I'm presuming they're not fussy."
Ooooooh, give it time. When it's new to them, it's amazing. After a year, they'll be turning their nose up and looking at you with their special brand of "Seriously? Where's the fish?"
The funniest thing my cat ever proved to like/dislike was when he was young, my brother put some baked beans into his bowl. After 10 minutes, there was the neatest pile of dried beans next to his bowl you could possibly imagine. He methodically took each one out, sucked it as hard as possible for the tomato sauce, then spat them out.
The one important note I found out much much later was this...
"The truth is that most cats are lactose intolerant so giving them cow's milk can actually cause significant health issues. Milk doesn't impart the necessary cat nutrition and many cats suffer stomach upsets or other related problems because their owner thought that they were giving them a treat."
My cat used to throw up on occasion and while we didn't give him milk a lot, we did give it to him as said treats. In hindsight, I wonder if there was a connection to when he was sick or not.


"They don't mind me petting them, most of the time."
Most of them will develop habits about where they don't like to be stroked. My last cat loved being rubbed front to back over his head, but if you did side-to-side, he would get agitated. Do it enough and he would hiss. But once you learn what they don't like then it's not a problem. It's just each cat has his/her own special "HOW DARE YOU STROKE ME IN THAT MANNER!" grievance It's completely arbitrary as far as I can tell.


"They seem fairly relaxed about general noises, such as tv and bathrooms."
Again, a bit like the stroking, there will be something that makes them go nuts. With my last one, it was the vacuum. If it's high-pitched to them or has a certain hiss to it, they will run like the wind.
They especially don't like having someone blow into their face. Can't remember how I found that one out, probably my brother being mean to them.


The best part is learning whose lap they love the most. If there's 2-3 of you in a house, every cat will find someone's lap "the comfiest" and will shun the other people's laps if available. Some will even magically wake up while on someone else's lap when you walk into the room and sit down. Then they will yawn, get up, jump down, groggily walk over to you and jump onto your lap, completely forgetting the original lap owner ever existed. That alone makes you laugh and feel special.