Raising a kitten to be a vegetarian: stupid, cruel, disastrous, or all three?

You don’t sound hysterical. You sound appropriately concerned.

I’m right there with ya, NajaNivea. I think, if the OP came back and told us that she/he (?) spoke to the friend and the friend was enlightened that her morals about meat should not be imposed upon her kitty, and that she would be henceforth feeding kitty what it needs… then I would relax and sleep better at night, knowing one less cat out there is being abused/neglected/whatever you wanna call it.

If the friend insists that feeding kitty a veg diet is the only way to go, then I would feel better if the OP catnapped said kitty and rehomed it.

Won’t someone think of the poor blind kitties?

I’ve suggested as much, as gracefully as I can to a longtime friend who’s also a dyed-in-the-wool (I’ll grant him that term, rather than “militant”) vegan. I’m less concerned because it is outdoors a lot, and I’m sure manages to find some food elsewhere.

And it may not have been apparent before your monitor fogged over, but the “evenly divided” comment was ironic.

These turnips … are they made of vinyl? :smiley:

Just needed lighten up the thread a little. That stupid woman. If she really wants to have a pet AND subject it to her vegan principles, then get a damn hamster.

(Then she can freak out when it catches and eats a cockroach!)

Some animal lover! Of course they can eat a vegetarian diet. Any animal can. Tigers can.

Ohhh… so* that’s* what that “wooshing” noise was :smiley:
Sorry, got carried away with the whole “militant vegans driving me into a frothing rage” thing :wink:

Just for the record, there are vagans out there who are not completely crazy. I know 5 of them, and they are great people who feed their animals appropriately meat-based, even raw, diets.

I’m trying to find out more about the vegetarian tiger with no luck. Any chance of a link?

Also, any animal? Vegetarian snakes? Dolphins? Really? Or have I stumbled into a whoosh?

For certain values of “vegetarian diet” as in,
An excellent vegetarian diet for lions … is zebras.
or
I went on a vegetarian diet once, lost twenty pounds … them fuckers are hard to catch!I hope.

CMC fnord!

Our cat likes fruit, especially mandarin oranges. But we would never try to give him an all veggie diet.

So what was her reaction to your info, Skald? Stupid dumb bitch.

ALL of my cats eat regular cat food. However, that doesn’t mean they don’t like human food as well – though none of them eat veggies:

Maggie LOVES basically any people food. Her favorite are french fries and donuts, but she’ll grab anything she can off of your plate. You have to watch though, because she’ll try to grab potato or corn chips, and choke on them.
(I was trying to eat a piece of banana bread for breakfast a couple days ago and she kept trying to eat a piece off of my plate.)
Piper Grace must have some kind of pica, because she likes eating plastic flowers. I shit you not. She ended up extremely constipated last year and had to be prescribed medicine. She does like Cheetos, though.
I had a cat when I was little that LOVED meatloaf and mashed potatos. Her favorite food though was tuna.

The one I recall in this vein was an episode of Animal Precinct, and the woman in question was a middle-aged Russian who spoke very poor English and seemed to have some mental problems as well. She was living on something like $200 a month and had eight or nine cats, which she was feeding mostly rice. When the officers arrived and offered to take the cats, she reacted as if God had come down and personally blessed her (which was just as well, since there was no way the officers were leaving without the cats).

The relevant part: one of the cats had only the vaguest idea that there were other things “out there,” and another’s retinas were completely gone (its irises had expanded to the extent that pretty much all you could see was pupil — a pretty disturbing sight — and the vet showed that he could ram its head into a table [if he were so inclined], because the poor beastie had no sense of its surroundings).

IIRC, they didn’t cite the woman, partly because she was obviously not all there and partly because she was so cooperative in surrendering the cats.

The point (if any): Skald’s acquaintance is a loon. And a dangerous one to boot.

Oh, aye.

This won’t necessarily work. I will occasionally fix a small plate of whatever the humans are having for my cat. Oh, it’ll just be half a spoonful of mac’n’cheese and a similar amount of chicken, but I’ve put down a stalk of asparagus and an ounce or so of diced steak. Sapphire will eat the asparagus first every time. She’s absolutely nuts about asparagus. She’s Siamese, or at least part Siamese, so her mental stability isn’t all it could be, but this isn’t the best test.

Won’t someone think of the Dirt Kittens?

The Girls With Slingshots webcomic had an amusing story arc on this topic.

This thread is going past this point, but…Well, you kinda got it. “Bless your/his/her heart” is a malleable nuanced saying in the South. In a simple google, the definitions I found there don’t encompass all the meaning as used in normal conversation. The first one’s to come up refer to it as an insult, and, it often is, as a polite way of saying, “right, what a jerk”, especially used by women.

But, it’s also used to gently say that, though misguided, the person talked about means well, but doesn’t quite see the bigger picture. That’s the sense I was using in with my post.

Now, you can get into the further nuance of “Bless their pea pickin heart”, which means they are on the far side of understanding a discussion.

My cats, though fed quite well, still drag various small mammals home for me to share. Bless their little feline hearts.

Some turtles need to eat live fish. Good luck with that if you won’t feed a cat meat.

Better off with some sort of rodent, like a guinea pig.

That’s the way I took it.

I know it’s like shooting fish in a barrel, but just for fun and for the record…

The inverted commas don’t serve any purpose in this sentence, except to imply that the term is open to interpretation (it isn’t), or is being used in an inappropriate manner (not so). This is a subtle touch of prejudice used to hint that what may seem unnatural at first glance is not really so.

100% irrelevant. Whether some wild animals do or do not eat some plant matter has nothing to do with the point at issue, which is whether it’s okay and healthy to impose a vegetarian diet on domesticated animals.

The word ‘besides’ is meaningless here, because the content that it follows is irrelevant both to the point at issue and to what follows.

Again, irrelevant propaganda. The point under discussion is not the practicality of trying to replicate whatever diet a wild animal would select for itself, but the healthy options for a domesticated animal.

Unsupported assertion.

Ethical consistency with philosphy X is not the point. The point is, healthy dietary options for a domesticated animal.

In other words, even PETA can’t mount an effective case for feeding your cat a vegetarian diet, and have to resort to non-arguments, prejudicial wording, brainless abandonment of good reasoning and blanket assertions of whatever they want the truth to be. Some people are so stupid, you wonder how they remember to stay upright.