.Middy. wrote: Cats can not survive on a vegan or a vegetarian diet. They are obligate carnivores. If you can't handle feeding a proper raw diet, then you need to put the cat on a good quality canned or kibble diet.
If you refuse to do even that, then you need to find the cat a new home and consider adopting a species that is able to live on a vegan diet, because cats can not.
Quality kibble wherein the meat is pounded and ground into an indistinguishable pulp, extruded into a kibble shape and heat treated beyond recognization? In my opinion, it doesn't matter that it was once meat, the only function that it
really seems to serve in most kibbles, aside from fooling you into thinking that the food is somehow 'superior' in quality, is to keep the food nice and acidic for the cats' urine pH. Half of the nutrients are cooked out and have to be added back in, even that precious taurine. If I need a urine acidifer, I'll buy one, thanks.
Believe it or not, it's probably more harmful to shun this cats' owner and yell 'abuse!' than it is to simply educate them on how to do a vegetarian or vegan diet correctly. Vegetarian diets are not inherently bad. Nutrients are nutrients. The body doesn't care where they come from. Cats can survive and, yes, thrive, on a vegan or vegetarian diet. This is a fact. Deny it all you like, but your apparent ostrich behavior won't make it cease to be. We're making scientific breakthroughs all the time. The ability for cats to be vegan is one of them.
Chickpea wrote:
I wanted to ask some more questions, but I feel oddly unwelcome here, no offense. I took a bunch of pictures of Neo and I want to post them, but I feel like nobody will care and like everybody hates me just because of what I choose to fed him. I obviously have everything figured out now. He likes a lot of foods and a lot of treats, but I mean, you guys even made a rule because I posted asking about treat suggestions. Nobody can talk about their diet now, even if they're planning to feed their cat "correctly" (notice the quotation marks?). How is that fair? For anyone?
Transkitty wrote:
Feeding a species appropriate diet is correct, no matter what your personal feelings on it are.
If you cannot respect the rules of the thread, you are not welcome to post here.
Chickpea wrote:
Well, if you say soooo.
Anyways, would a vegetarian diet be any better? I found this recipe with eggs, plain 2% yogurt, tofu, oil, and supplements. I really do want what's best for him, but the idea of feeding him meat, or even any animal product, is very hard..
I've seen that diet floating around on forums and I'll tell you, from personal experience, that your cat will probably be fine. My boys are on a very similar recipe made with balanceit.com that consists of cottage cheese, scrambled eggs and coconut oil as well as their Carnivore Blend supplement. My veterinarian is actually okay with my decision; it's making a cat completely vegan that's hard and even then, it can be done with the right knowledge and the right cat. Some don't do very well on high carbohydrate diets and some have a tendency toward urinary crystals and those cats should only ever be vegetarian with 'meaty' foods, such as low-lactose dairy products and any sort of egg, and the amount of plant matter in the diet should be a good deal lower than the amount of animal matter and, depending on why the cat in question cannot be vegan, grains should be omitted in their new vegetarian food.
Transkitty wrote:
Unfortunately not. Cats are obligate carnivores, which means that other sources of amino acids and nutrients aren't bioavailable to them.
I definitely understand that the idea of feeding your cat another animal can feel wrong, especially if you're vegan for ethical reasons. However, I don't think it's very ethical to try to force him to thrive on nutrients that his body has to work harder to access, much less utilize.
The food I feed uses animal sources from local farmers only, so they aren't supporting the appalling conditions factory farmed animals are forced to deal with. If you're willing to consider feeding an appropriate canned or kibble food, Id be more than happy to find more ethical brands for you to consider!
Except that the other sources of amino acids and nutrients
are bioavailable to them. At least, if you're feeding kibble, which is an extremely processed food, meat-based or not. There are no enzymes in kibble. Nothing to make that heat treated meat any different than heat treated grain or sunflower seeds or whatever may be lurking in that bag of vegan kibble, except that one is alkalizing, one is acidic and one contains no carbohydrates and the other contains a lot, or a little, depending on the ingredients used. Nutrition-wise, there is no difference whatsoever. Even "high quality" foods like Wellness CORE and Blue Wilderness are fortified with synthetic taurine and nutrients, despite the meat content, and a lot of cats do wonderfully on said foods, so why wouldn't a vegan cat do just as well on food with essentially the same nutrient profile?
