Does Smidgen like niboshi?
The homeless Japanese cat I was feeding last week didn't seem to be overly keen on the fish I was giving it (some kind of iwashi? came in a pack of 6 with a plastic straw piercing the mouths) and much preferred the stale katsuobushi I found in the larder.

I know very little about cats and would have liked to have been able to log on and ask for advice here. In particular it didn't like the egg pouches of the fish (eventually it would eat the rest), but, in addition to yellowed katsuobushi it did like milk, raw egg, chikuwa and loved tuna so much it swallowed down the tofu/miso/tuna burgers I made.

Its breath didn't smell of cat-food, no cat-food is sold on Shiraishi Island.