When I was a kid, the barn cats got fed milk mixed with water, bread and whatever table scraps were left over that day. Of course, they were free to eat as many mice, birds, etc. as they caught.

Oh, and sometimes my dad would squirt milk straight from a cow's udder onto a cat's face. They loved that.

For billytea: Scientists unlock secrets of Australia's giant 30kg koalas

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, giant versions of Australia's unique wildlife stalked the continent. There were kangaroos up to 3m tall and enormous wallabies, wombats and echidnas. There were also koalas: larger and weightier than the creatures sometimes seen today in eucalyptus trees.

Giant koalas died out about 50,000 years ago, along with most of Australia's "megafauna". For a long time, modern koalas were assumed to be dwarf descendants of those prehistoric animals. But now an Australian palaeontologist has established that the two koalas lived side by side – a finding that may throw new light on why the megafauna disappeared.

I'll be getting an adult cat, so kitten indoctrination's off the table.

Depends on the age. Rigatoni is almost 2 and still has a lot of kitten ways.

Maybe there were also giant Eucalyptus trees.

Our cats always got Purina, supplemented with the occasional wet food or people food treat, depending on their tastes. One of them was mad for green peas or melon. Current cat appears to supplement her own diet with chipmunks and birds, the less said about that the better.

After they moved him here from Moscow, my brother's cat went through a phase last year of refusing to eat anything but pate and shrimp. (I should note that these were things they tried in desperation after he refused absolutely everything else for nearly a week - not their go-to catfood choices.)

My cats get Iams.

Rigatoni is almost 2 and still has a lot of kitten ways.

Rigatoni is a great name for a cat.

my brother's cat went through a phase last year of refusing to eat anything but pate and shrimp.

I think I'm gonna try morphing into a cat now. Mmmmm.

It sounds like people are feeding their cats a wide variety of commercial cat foods, with adjustments based on the cats' age and health status. So I guess as long as I stay away from Storebrand's Best Chicken-skin Balls mixed with Shredded Packing Peanuts, I should be ok. Or, rather, the cat should be.

It sounds like people are feeding their cats a wide variety of commercial cat foods, with adjustments based on the cats' age and health status. So I guess as long as I stay away from Storebrand's Best Chicken-skin Balls mixed with Shredded Packing Peanuts, I should be ok. Or, rather, the cat should be.

I would suggest staying away from Tender Vittles (assuming they still make those? moist kibble in a pouch?), as that's what we fed our cat when I was growing up and it rotted her teeth. Wasn't 'til she was seven or eight that we found out it's basically like candy for cats, and by then she wouldn't eat anything else.

Oh, dear. Thanks, Polgara. I remember feeding that to my cat growing up, but he also got the hard kibble, which probably helped clean his teeth.

I do have a friend whose cat lived to a ripe old age on the cheapest dry food available. He was big, but he was legitimately big boned, so who knows what he would have looked like living on birds and squirrels.