I do not give a shit how healthy a vegan diet is for a cat. I care that my cat eats, continues to behave like a cat, poops regularly, and seems to be okay. As long as I have that covered I have no concerns whatsoever about continuing to feed him vegan. To believe that it is wrong to kill animals for personal consumption but somehow it’s okay to feed them to a companion animal is absolutely inconsistent. Our cat Stanis is a very picky eater, and he has liked both Ami Cat and Evolution cat food just fine. We transitioned him in a matter of days to each of those foods. Granted, he’s only been vegan for a couple of months now, but we have seen no ill-effects.
I’m just really tired of hearing vegans say that they don’t have enough information yet to feel that a vegan diet for their cat is the most healthy. Who cares? I don’t believe a vegan diet is the most healthy one for a human. If I wasn’t vegan I would probably eat honey, eggs, and fish – but I don’t, because it is fundamentally immoral to do so.
I can understand that people are sentimental about their pets. But look. A cat is just one life. Over the course of a cat’s life, eating a typical diet, he will consume the equivalent of well over one hundred animals. It strikes me as obvious that it’s better to drop the cat in favor of all the other animals. I can understand the sense of personal responsibility for the cat, but this is still totally irrational behavior. Maybe I’ll feel differently if my cat starts to have issues, but for now I continue to be upset with most vegan cat owners, many of whom have never even bothered to try out a vegan diet for their cat.
If you are a “vegan” dog owner who feeds your canine meat, you have absolutely no excuse. You are not a vegan.
My dogs are vegans, except when they kill a possum or bird in the backyard. I don’t keep cats as pets because I don’t like watching a house cat go stir crazy and I don’t like outdoor cats destroying urban wildlife. I’d like an explanation about not eating honey. I stopped for a while, but then I studied some comparative anatomy and I realized that it is impossible for a bee to suffer. I think killing the bees is a little bit pointless, so i don’t go around buying it. I also don’t wear silk. I don’t kill bugs if it’s not necessary, but I don’t cry if someone kills a fly (i.e. President Obama with his ninja skills). Because, if these simple life forms cannot feel pain, I can’t see a reason to get all bent out of shape when they die. The following example is often used illogically and out of context, but it makes sense in this case: what about other life forms, that are not sentient and are killed all of the time? Bacteria, fungi, protists, plants (the latter three being eukaryotic). We eat them, we flush them down the toilet, we wash them down the shower drain, and it’s ok. They’re parasites, they’re symbionts, they live, they die, I don’t care. Same with bees. That being said, there is a part of me, separate from my logical part, that “rescues” crickets, tapes snail shells back together to give them a chance at survival, and yells at the boys on the All Saint’s playground to stop smashing ant beds. But, that’s just me being emotional. I indulge myself, but I know it’s silly. Ok, commenting on these blogs is not going to help me pass my physiology and microbiology finals on Friday. Peace.
Hi Taryn. I might have responded to this on the imported-to-Facebook version of this blog entry, but that was too far back to remember. I’m trying to start blogging again (which is to say, write my semi-annual treatise on some inflammatory topic with counterproductive intent) so I figured I should finally post a response to this comment.
I think you’re spot-on for the most part. I don’t know if I felt that way several months, but that’s immaterial at this point. I definitely acknowledge that drawing the line for consideration of beings is a difficult one, and in my head I simply draw it at animalia, which certainly protects bees, worms, snails, etc. but it denies that things like yeast (I think), lactobacillus (or something), and the microscopic things that live in my mouth during the afternoon and evening before I brush my teeth before bed, are animals just the same. They’re just smaller ones with fewer cells (Right? I’m basing this off Wikipedia and omnivores with college degrees, along with a moderate dose of speculation.).
I have no problem with your dogs killing animals. They are not vegans. My cat is not vegan. We are feeding animals plants. They don’t have the moral compass (which is not to say they don’t possess some sort of morality) that we as enlightened humans do. I like to joke that my cat is a revolutionary abolitionist vegan in solidarity with direct action against exploiters, and that he has a long, sordid history of monkey-wrenching the machine, but I know that it’s not true. He’s actually the dispossessed soul of a computer programmer who died of asphyxiation in the mid-1990s.
In related news, Stanis actually likes his new cat food. Evolution wet food in the yellow can. He’s bananas for it.