Cats are carnivores. They eat absolutely nothing but meat (please correct me though, if I am wrong assuming this). Vegetarians by contrast, eat no meat. They think killing other animals for food is needless and cruel. So what do they feed their cats? And please, if there are any vegetarians on these boards, feel free to add your input. I am interested to know the answer to this question. BTW, I consider myself a vegetarian in principle, but an omnivore in actual practice.
Apparently there are vegan cats.
http://www.vegancats.com/
I know a couple that’s vegan and asked them the same question. They said their vet said DO NOT feed them vegan diets. Cats, unlike us, are true carnivores and need meat. Ferrets are in the same boat.
Not all people are vegetarians primarily because of ‘cruelty to animals’, so its not always an issue in any case. And of course many vegetarians arent ‘vegetarians no matter what’, they simply reduce their use of animal products where they easily can.
You’re really talking about vegans I think, and I imagine many of them simpyl dont have pets, as they would see having animals as a pet a problem in the first place.
Im sure some are hypocrities too or at least being inconsistent, I cant think of any ethical position taken where some people of the espousing group wont be. But theres lots of possible ways they might not be.
Otara
Vegetarians feed their cats cat food. As appetizing as cat food looks and smells, somehow vegetarians are able to restrain themselves from digging in.
Hopefully meat, because cats cannot by choice, be vegetarians, and especially vegans. Cats need taurine in their diet. If they do not have it, it will cause them to go blind. I don’t know about people whose political views overrule common sense, but I suspect someone who loves their cat would rather feed it meat than watch it suffer and go blind.
Well, I can’t speak for all vegetarians, but I feed my cat cat food. Deli-Cat, specifically.
There are many more reasons to become a vegetarian aside from the cruelty to animals issue. I would think that if feeding a pet a proper diet really bothered a vegetarian, they would not have the animal to begin with.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Jim B. *
**They think killing other animals for food is needless and cruel./QUOTE]
I’ll assume we’re talking about ‘ethical’ vegetarians here. (Obviously someone who can’t eat or doesn’t like meat wouldn’t have a problem.)
The glib answer is killing for CAT food isn’t needless.
A lot of vegetarians don’t own cats for this reason, some justify feeding their cat meat. (I suspect some try and make them live on carrots and get a dead cat. Not all veges are nice people.)
I’ve heard of people trying to feed their cats vegan diets. They tend to lead short, miserable lives. And the cats do, too 
Thankfully, most of these people don’t keep pets in the first place.
LOL. With you on that one.
Sorry, by ‘these people’ do you mean ‘people who abuse cats’, ‘veges who won’t feed a cat meat’ or ‘veges’?
I think they feed them non-vegetarians…
I have a vegan friend who has no problem feeding his cat meat products.
But if he had a pet that did not require a carnivorous diet to be healthy, he would avoid it.
Yes, it is a dilemma.
Luckily there’s a lot of non-meat filling in most canned commercial catfood, besides the meat-leftover-parts that are it’s staple ingredient. As cereal is so cheap, as much of it (up to 40 % if I remember correctly) is put in as possible without compromising it’s nutritional value too much.
My source for this is our national Consumer-magazine, 1996. That makes me feel better about it. My cat is a semi-vegetarian even on regular catfood.
I also make a point of feeding my cat canned food made of **free-range meat **. That the cow or chicken is killed to make food is bad enough: at least with free-range meat they’ve had a fairly comfortabele life before they died.
In the wild cats only eat meat and that is what they’re designed to eat. Depriving a cat of meat is very cruel as they need it to survive. I imagine the so-called vegan cats described in the earlier link probably supplement their diet by hunting.
Vegetarian Mice?
I call bullshit. Vegans feed their cats vegan cat food – that’s right, NO MEAT. Type those three words into Google and see how many manufacturers, distributors, and recipe recommendations you find. I have no idea how healthy or complete these diets are, but obviously cats aren’t dying by droves.
I thought I could feed my cat on a vegan diet and when I saw she didn’t like the food and wouldn’t even eat it, I switched her back to meat.
Too many people think of vegetarianism or veganism as all or nothing, including veg people, but I’ve come to the conclusion that it simply ISN’T, even if you are veg for ethical reasons. As a vegetarian, I do what I can to prevent cruelty to animals as long as I don’t create another type of harm (or it isn’t extremely inconvenient). I’m comfortable with that.
IMO, feeding my cats a vegan or even vegetarian diet would constitue cruelty to animals. Maybe some other vegetarian’s cat is different…though from what I’ve read, a cat needs certain nutrients that only meat can provide.
I repeat it is very cuel to try make your cat go vegan:
http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:1jTG8_pLBeEJ:www.zooclub.ru/eng/cats/korm/1.shtml+cats+vegetarians&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
We had vegetarian friends who fed their cats canned salmon, on the theory that at least the fish had a normal life up until the last moment. They were the most unattractve pair of cats I’ve ever seen, but I’m not sure there was any connection.
[Actually, come to think of it, getting killed and eaten is probably pretty normal for a fish as well.]
There does appear to be a lot of vegetarian sites that say your cat can go vegan, but this is not true. Groups involved in cat protection (for example the Cat Protection League) catergorically state do not make your cat go vegetarian, aside from taurine, they also need vitamin A and animal fat (they cannot digest plant oil properly) otherwise they will develop digestive and heart problems.