Of my 2 ex-feral kittens, the girl has a huge fluffy coat- not quite Persian, but more fluffy than any other I’ve had (and fluffier than her mom). She’s kinda striped and kinda tortie (dilute) and has the most prominent M on her forehead I’ve ever seen (I tell her it stands for “minx,” which she is). Her brother is almost twice her size, and somewhere between a mackerel and spotted tabby (no fancy breeds in him, though he does look somewhat bengal-y), and his lighter stripes are definitely ticked, as are his paws etc. His M is not as pronounced as hers, though; I figured it’s because their head shapes are wildly different.

Both of them like water, by the way, and will play in it.

A quick Googling says that there’s lots of taurine in fish, so maybe cats sense that it’s healthy for them.

But I guess you can learn to like any food, no matter how you were raised. I just had my favorite cuisine, Indian food, and it’s not like I grew up in Mumbai.

The seafaring tradition of the “ship’s cat,” as the resident mouser, would have also made fish available to cats without them catching it themselves.

But that doesn’t mean they couldn’t catch it themselves, if the opportunity arose. They have had quite a lot of time to adapt to different environments. They’ve grown longer fur and differing body styles; liking stinky fish might be the least of their adaptation achievements.