You will know what a cat weighs up before eating, which conditions you can fix without buying anything, and when a refusal stops being about taste.
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It sniffs, it backs off, it scratches at the floor beside the bowl and walks away. The scene looks like a tantrum, and it almost always has a simpler cause.
Left to its own rhythm, a cat returns to food many times across the day and the night, for very small amounts each time. That is how it works, inherited from a hunter of small prey.
So a bowl still full after an hour does not mean a refusal. What can be measured is what has gone by the end of the day, not what happens in the five minutes we happen to watch.
In cats, smell switches on the wish to eat. A congested cat, sneezing and breathing badly, no longer smells its food and loses interest in it, even while hungry.
That explains why warmed wet food is often accepted when the same food straight from the fridge is ignored: warmth releases the smell. A cat with a blocked nose that eats nothing at all for several days is not a fussy cat, it is a reason to consult.
A cat that pulls kibble out to eat it beside the bowl, or clears the middle and leaves the edges, is telling you something about the container. Whiskers are sensitive, and rubbing against high sides bothers some cats.
The idea cannot be settled by a text, it is tested in a day and costs nothing: put the same food on a flat plate. If the cat finishes it, that was the question. If nothing changes, move on to the next one.
A cat eats with its back exposed, busy and vulnerable. A bowl in a through-route, against an appliance that starts up, or in the middle of a room another animal crosses, creates a hesitation that looks like disgust.
Being close to the litter tray is the most common case, and the easiest to fix. In a household with several cats, separate bowls in separate rooms also settle refusals that were being blamed on the food.
A pouch open for a long time, a bowl never washed under the day's fresh serving, a layer of kibble drying at the bottom: a cat picks up these details long before we do.
Serve small amounts, take away what has not been eaten, wash the dish like ordinary crockery. Those three habits settle a share of the refusals blamed on the taste of the food.
Cats are wary of what they do not know, and that wariness runs stronger in those that met few textures and few flavours in their first months.
This is not a personality, it is a history. It does not get erased, but it can be worked on through very gradual exposure, without forcing, and without removing the familiar food until the new one is accepted.
Fussiness is worth discussing while general condition holds steady. A cat losing weight, drinking much more, vomiting often or keeping to itself has left that conversation.
The other limit is time. A cat that eats almost nothing for several days running can develop liver trouble, and that makes waiting expensive. In both cases, the subject is no longer which food to choose.