Vegan Cat Food Hunt

[tabbytom]

As mentioned, cats are Obligate Carnivores.

This is taken from :- What Does it Mean the Cat is an Obligate Carnivore?

• Cats have a higher protein requirement than even most other carnivores.
• Cats cannot downregulate protein metabolism. If they do not get enough meat-based protein, they rob their own muscles for it.
• Cats must have preformed arginine and taurine (amino acids which humans synthesize). A lack of these in the diet rapidly causes blindness and death: only animal protein provides these at levels cats require.

 

[arouetta]

There was an episode of Animal Cops where they did an animal welfare check on a home where the woman decided to make her cats vegetarians. The cats were literally starving to death, you could see their bones clearly, even though their bowls were constantly full of grains. They ate and ate and couldn't get any nutrients at all out of their food.

Cats are carnivores, all they can digest is meat. They just can't get the nutrition they need from non-meat stuff. To force your cat to starve amidst plenty.....I really hope this is a troll thread and that someone who supposedly cares so much about animals to stop eating them would not make the one animal they love the most to suffer slow starvation.

 

[mokapi]

If you really want to go 110% vegan, I suggest finding a home for the cat and get yourself a hamster or a strict veggie eating pet. As others said above, your cat will not thrive well on a vegan diet and it's not fair for him.

Even hamsters are omnivorous and do well eating crickets, mealworms, etc. Consider, instead, a seed-eating bird, or maybe a millipede.

 

[Willowy]

A bunny. They're totally vegan. Well I suppose some brands of bunny pellets might sneak in some animal fat or something, so checking labels would be necessary. But they have no need of animal products at all.

And a well socialized rabbit can be just as good of a housepet as a cat.

 

[tabbytom]

Seems like TS did not come back to check his thread

Hello B Bigkidscry , are you still around? We miss you.

 

[muffy]

I think it is trolls starting these threads trying to make vegans look bad. I think these days people know that cats cannot survive on vegan diets. I was vegan for 12 years and I admit I was curious when I was in a pet store and saw some vegan food for cats. I was tempted to try some but common sense took over and I brought organic cat food with meat instead. It did bother me to feed my cats meat but I had the cats before I went vegan and I was not going to give them away.

Ellen

 

[lavishsqualor]

I sure hope you're right, muffy. These types of threads always really upset me.

 

[sidhe]

I've seen this often enough where I don't think it's trolling. It's people wanting to do the right thing, but are very, very misinformed. Or mislead by websites trying to sell their own vegan pet food products/recipes.

Not everyone does research on their pets (in my experience, I'd say very few people do research on their pets). So if they are ignorant about their pet's biology, it would be easy to believe people when they say that vegan diets can be healthy, as long as the food they're buying says that it contains all the nutrients their pet needs.

 

[muffy]

I sure hope you're right, muffy. These types of threads always really upset me.

Yes, they upset me, too.

Muffy

 

[banana queen]

Vegan diets are bad for cats. Cats are obligate carnivores and will die without meat. Its cruel to a cat to force them on a diet that is not species appropriate. You can either buy meat for your cat, but make sure that you buy free range meat with as little animal cruelty as possible, or buy no meat at all by rehoming your cat (and only getting pets that are also vegan in the future).

 

[orange&white]

Well, I hope the original poster comes back to join us. Making a first question post and getting a resounding community "Nooooo!" must have been a little off putting.

B Bigkidscry ...Come back and keep us posted on how you and your cat are doing.

 

[rubysmama]

It could be trolling, but more likely an honest query from a new vegan. When love of animals is the motivation to become vegan, it makes sense to want to eliminate all animal products from your personal use.

As I posted upthread, when I became vegetarian I struggled with the idea of feeding meat to a cat. I knew I'd have to feed it meat, but also wanted to give a shelter cat a home, and eventually I adopted Ruby.

If feeding a cat vegan was doable, I'd go for it, but that still wouldn't make Ruby vegan. She'd still hunt and eat (yuck) the spiders and other insects she finds in the furnace room.

 

[arouetta]

As I posted upthread, when I became vegetarian I struggled with the idea of feeding meat to a cat.

If you could explain that, I would like to hear why. I mean, denying meat to a house cat is pretty much the same as watching nature documentaries and saying "The gazelle got away, so the lioness and her cubs will starve to death! Hooray for slow death by starvation!!!" I mean, there's predator animals and there's prey animals, it's a balanced ecosystem, and hoping the predator animals starve is just cruelty to those animals. Plus the balanced ecosystem means that if the predator animals die, the prey animals will populate out of control and then they'd slowly starve to death too. So how can there be any ethical struggling over letting animals be animals and eat according to their needs?

 

[orange&white]

@aroueta I'm not a vegetarian, but I can explain the vegetarian standpoint. We humans don't hunt cows, sheep, pigs and chickens...we raise the majority of them on factory farms for food. If 90% of humans went vegetarian, factory farming would cease to exist (there would still not be enough small grass-fed/free-range niche farmers to supply meat to the 10%) and we would have to hunt for meat if we wanted meat (or move out of the city and start a farm). Our cats would also not be contributing to the "plight" of livestock animals. Cats would go back to catching mice, crickets, and the occasional bird... which I doubt vegetarians have as much of a problem with that natural predator/prey scenario.

 

[thehistorian]

You cannot feed cats a vegan diet. Cats are obligate carnivores. If you feed them a vegetarian or vegan diet, your cat will become severely sick and die. That is the epitome of animal cruelty right there. If you cannot bring yourself to feed your cat what it needs, you need to surrender him or her to someone who can ASAP.

EDIT: And this person who should have a cat is probably feeding her cat vegan food and wondering why he is severely sick right now. God, I hate humans.

 

[rubysmama]

If you could explain that, I would like to hear why. I mean, denying meat to a house cat is pretty much the same as watching nature documentaries and saying "The gazelle got away, so the lioness and her cubs will starve to death! Hooray for slow death by starvation!!!" I mean, there's predator animals and there's prey animals, it's a balanced ecosystem, and hoping the predator animals starve is just cruelty to those animals. Plus the balanced ecosystem means that if the predator animals die, the prey animals will populate out of control and then they'd slowly starve to death too. So how can there be any ethical struggling over letting animals be animals and eat according to their needs?

I never considered denying meat to a house cat. I knew a cat absolutely needed meat, so I had to decide which I felt more strongly about - a) no meat in my home or b) adopting a homeless feline companion. But I do understand why the original poster was asking about vegan cat food.

As for nature, I'll admit I hate when prey is caught. Yes, the predator could have a family to feed, but so might the prey. But I don't struggle ethically about letting animals be animals, I just hate that it's the way it has to be.

 

[Yanaka]

Some people are actually feeding their animals vegan diets. I've seen vegan canned foods for dogs and cats in stores, more so in France maybe. I'm a veggie and used to be a vegan for a little while before switching back to (French!) cheese, but I'm highly skeptical of these diets. It's very far from our situation--beans and tofu and grains can't fulfill cats' protein needs, I believe.

 

[lavishsqualor]

There are dozens of sites just like THIS ONE.

It's incredibly upsetting and rises to the level of animal cruelty in my book.

 

[Yanaka]

There are dozens of sites just like THIS ONE.

It's incredibly upsetting and rises to the level of animal cruelty in my book.

I know, it's disgusting. I'm going to sound silly, but I naively thought there would be some kind of tofu or whatever to replace the meat?! It's just veggies and grain!! It's awful, my stomach turned just reading the labels

 

[Kieka]

There are dozens of sites just like THIS ONE.

It's incredibly upsetting and rises to the level of animal cruelty in my book.

That site actually says that while vegan is possible they no longer recommend it. Too many people doing it wrong and their cats getting sick.

But yes, there are hundreds of sites saying cats thrive as vegans. Just like there are hundreds of sites claiming to have the perfect easy weight loss solution, a natural way to cure cancer, a proven method to earn millions from the comfort of your home, and that by simply providing your name, address, ss, and first born child you could get a few thousand dollars tax free. In this digital age people need to cross reference and verify information not just believe it because someone said it.