http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/24/business/a-healthier-way-to-feed-your-cat-hi
de-its-meals.html?_r=0
http://tinyurl.com/jrf3rm2
(本篇为陌生人 蔡子岳翻译的)
A Healthier Way to Feed Your Cat: Hide Its Meals
让你家猫咪更健康：藏好猫食
Prototype
By CLAIRE MARTIN JULY 23, 2016
If you have a house cat, you probably end up dealing with cat vomit on a regul
ar basis, says Dr. Liz Bales, a Philadelphia veterinarian and the owner of a o
ne-eyed hairless cat named Carlos. But, she maintains, it doesn’t need to be
that way.
One culprit is what is known as scarf-and-barf syndrome, in which the cat over
indulges at mealtimes to a calamitous degree. Other common cat behaviors she h
as observed are the relentless stalking of food bowls in hopes of a refill, th
e nocturnal demands for food while owners are trying to sleep and a contentiou
s relationship with the litter box that results in a hit-or-miss pattern of us
e.
As Dr. Bales views it, an underlying issue behind all of these problems is tha
t living indoors suppresses cats’ natural hunting instincts. This dynamic has
increasingly come to light at the professional conferences she has attended i
n her 16 years as a veterinarian. She has also discussed it with animal behavi
orists and animal nutritionists.
“They need portion control. They need regular exercise. They really should be
in charge of their own feeding schedule,” Dr. Bales says she has learned. “
All these factors boil down to cats should not be eating from bowls.”
Two years ago, after she couldn’t find anyone offering a solution, Dr. Bales
decided to come up with her own. Next month, the NoBowl Feeding System, a prod
uct she developed to simulate cats’ natural feeding habits, will start being
delivered to her first customers, of which there are nearly 3,500 so far.
NoBowl eschews the traditional bowl. Instead, cat owners stuff small portions
of dry food into five containers and hide them from the cat. The containers ar
e made of hard plastic and wrapped in stretchy gray fabric, resembling a mouse
. The idea is that when the cat is hungry, it will seek out the food and bat t
he pouch around, dispensing its contents through small holes in the fabric and
the plastic.
“无碗”（NoBowl）也就是放弃以碗喂食。代之的是以5个容器内置少量猫干粮，藏好不
给猫看到。容器以硬塑胶制，包覆以耐拉扯的灰色布料，外型模仿老鼠。概念是，猫咪饥
饿时，会找出食物，反复击打食物容器，猫干粮便从塑胶容器小洞跑出来。
In their natural environment, cats eat about 12 times a day, feasting on small
prey like mice and birds that are appropriate for their stomachs, which are a
bout the size of a table tennis ball. They also toss their prey around in a fo
rm of play that is essential to their well-being, says Dr. Carlo Siracusa, of
the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine.
天然环境下，猫一天进食12次，小型猎物如老鼠及小鸟与猫胃袋容量合适，约等于台球大
小。猫常以游玩的方式捕猎，这有益于猫健康，宾州兽医学院医师希拉库萨表示。
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“No matter if you feed your cat or not, your cat has to do those activities t
hat are related to the feeding behavior,” Dr. Siracusa says. “The behavior p
attern is written in the genes of the animal, which means that this is a behav
ioral need.”
“你家猫咪无论你喂食与否，都需要做与进食相关的运动。”
“动物基因里写有行为模式，也就是说这是种行为上的需求。”
When we plop a scoop of food into a bowl and walk away, “there’s nothing of
this hunting behavior,” he says. By contrast, cats are meant to play with the
NoBowl.
人类在碗里丢一团食物，然后自顾自走开，“这中间没有捕猎行为，”医师指出。相反的
，猫应该与“无碗”玩闹。
“Some cats just roll it,” Dr. Bales says “But with other cats, it’s a full
-on rodeo.”
Believing that the science behind the product is sound, Dr. Siracusa joined th
e NoBowl advisory board last spring.
According to research, about 58 percent of cats are overweight or obese. Most
of the solutions have focused only on portion control and reduced-calorie diet
s. These include high-tech feeders designed to manage cats’ food intake. Wire
less Whiskers and Pet Feedster are both automated feeders that release portion
ed cat food.
Dr. Bales is generally skeptical of tech-driven cat products, including the on
es intended for entertainment and exercise. “I have a lot of concerns,” she
says. “I don’t think your cat really wants to play with your iPad.”
And though it isn’t high-tech, Mr. Siracusa says that the NoBowl concept is,
in fact, quite cutting-edge. “Paying attention to not just the amount of food
, but to the feeding behavior is a very new concept for veterinary medicine,”
he says.
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That the NoBowl was created by a veterinarian should work to its advantage, sa
ys David Lummis, senior pet market analyst for Packaged Facts, a pet products
news and trends site. Hill’s Science Diet dog and cat food and Greenies treat
s for cats and dogs both had huge success and benefited from ties with veterin
arians, he says. Science Diet was developed by a vet, and Greenies received an
endorsement from the Veterinary Oral Health Council.
Tierra Bonaldi, a pet lifestyle consultant with the American Pet Products Asso
ciation, expects the NoBowl to thrive in the mass market, particularly given t
he recent focus on pet obesity. “Creating products that go back to their natu
ral instincts and make them more active and not overeating is a good thing,”
she says. She uses the Drinkwell Pet Fountain, a bowl with free-flowing water
that she says her cats prefer because it mimics outdoor water sources.
But the NoBowl doesn’t have the same convenience as a cat water fountain or a
n automated food dispenser. “As a person with multiple cats, I just do not se
e myself stuffing these things,” Mr. Lummis says. “It’s not just the time i
t would take. It’s also the whole idea of trying to get them out from under t
he couch and trying to find them.”
Dr. Bales says cats are not prone to hiding things; for instance, when they hu
nt outside, they often deposit their prey on your doorstep, she says. She sent
NoBowl systems to a test group of 25 cat owners and says the people with mult
iple cats reported that their pets adjusted well to the pouches. The feeding a
pproach for them is similar to that for people with both cats and dogs — a si
tuation that applies to Dr. Bales.
Her dog, a mutt named Plankton, would love to sink his teeth into the NoBowls,
“but it’s not made for dogs,” she says. To feed her cat, Carlos, she hides
the NoBowl pouches in a room and closes the door to keep Plankton out. Carlos
then engages in a solitary hunt, as cats are meant to do.
Even if cat owners are willing to put in the extra work, there’s the issue of
how much money they spend on their cats in the first place. According to Pack
aged Facts, dog products accounted for 61 percent of sales in the pet supplies
market in 2015, while cat products accounted for only 31 percent of sales.
At $60, the NoBowl is a higher-price item. This could make it vulnerable to im
itations that “could be a lot less expensive and offer some of the same kind
of fun benefits,” Mr. Lummis says.
Ms. Bonaldi, for one, is unfazed by the price. Obviously, it would be easy to
buy a cat bowl for $1.99, she says: “But for those who really want to take th
e extra steps, it’s like shopping at Whole Foods. It’s more expensive to eat
healthy.”
A version of this article appears in print on July 24, 2016, on page BU3 of th
e New York edition with the headline: A Healthier Way to Feed Your Cat: Hide I
ts Meals. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
(第47篇) 评语: 你有找到小小的翻译(小)误们吗?