I have three Siamese cats who love Fancy Feast, a brand of cat food manufactured by Purina. You can read about it at Purina.com or fancyfeast.com. If you like weird colors.
Unfortunately, I am having a hard time buying this brand of cat food, not because there is a shortage of the brand or not being sold at the markets where I shop. The cat food is there, particulary the flaked and grilled varieties that my cats love, and in sufficient quantities to feed not only my cats, but the rest of the neighborhood cats as well the raccoons, beavers, moles and other small critters who inhabit the surrounding woods.
The problem is that Fancy Feast has redesigned the labels and in some sort of misguided marketing idiocy, they are printing the name of the cat food in the container in type too small for me to read. And since cat food is now sold out of bins, there is no way to read the labels without picking up a can and even then, when the typeface is the size of a classified ad, it’s almost impossible to figure out what the hell is in the can-and Purinia’s obscure color coding only confuses the situation.
At first I though it was just me, but a couple of weeks ago I was in the cat food aisle trying to figure out what was in the cans when an elderly lady as me if I could help her find several varieties of the classic style of cat food. I had to get a 16-year-old stock boy to help her. And that’s when I started paying attention. A lot of men and women and buy the brand, but the proportion of women is definitely higher, and the proportion of buyers who are senior citizens are higher as well–and this is the very group I saw having the most difficulty reading the labels.
What possessed Purinia to label their product in such a way that their most loyal customers can no longer read the labels. I have to admit the cans are prettier, more colorful, and designed for visual appeal, but practical they are not. I, myself, have just about given up and I am experimenting with other brands that have enough pride in their product to put the name of the food on their cans in large enough letters for their customers to read.
So here is my poem for Purina:
I read the cat food label twice,
Did it say diced, or was it mice?
Mouse-flavor food may be a treat
Though my cats prefer fish to meat
But all’s here for my cats to eat
Is Tender Beef and Chicken Feet.
Citizen Poet 