vegan pets?

[kari_louise]

do any of you have vegan pets? id love my dog to go vegan but for an economy size dogfood bag its over 70$!!! Im poor and in college, the kind i buy now is 12.49

Comments

[__feverdream]

i have a cat, and cats are not meant to be vegan. i feel strange feeding her chicken, but it helps to know that she's healthy and happy. it also helps that i have access to cage-free chemical-free cat food (although you're right, it is a bit pricey).

i'm not sure you can call guide dogs slaves. it's unfortunate that the girl at your school is mean to her animal, but i think that's more about the individual owner than the system itself. the people i've seen with guide dogs on buses and around town all seemed to have a loving, respectful relationship with their dogs.

[sinestetici]

So true, and I think many people forget that there are many dogs out there who enjoy being a service animal. Think about ranch dogs, for instance. Or sheep dogs. When it all comes down to it, it's the owners responsibility to treat their animal right...but I don't think you can fault a system because of one persons' actions, you know what I mean?

[kari_louise]

if you say a cat wasnt meant to be vegan isnt it just as easy to argue humans arent meant to be vegan? i mean the first people did hunt their own animals....but in modern society no one hunts their food (fairly) and neither do cats or dogs. isnt it just like saying "oh you cant get all the vitamins and nutrients you need as a vegan" maybe there isnt suffiecient vegan cat food out there right now but im sure if we can live healthy vegan lifestyles that so can our pets.

[turnyourback]

you can't really compare cats' needs to human needs. there's something cats absolutely need (is it taurine?) that's usually animal-derived (but can sometimes be synthetic).

[__feverdream]

exactly.

and also, my cat in particular has severe food allergies, so it would be impossible for me to get her all the vitamins she needs, synthetic or not.

[roboticminotaur]

(but can sometimes be synthetic)

exactly.

[vgnwtch]

And almost always is in commercial pet foods because of the way the foods are processed. The same with the also essential vitamin A.

about the cat issue.

[soulcatcher318]

Cats are what is properly called "obligate carnivores

Re: about the cat issue.

[vgnwtch]

I've known lots of cat owners feeding their cats on "premium" commercial cat food or special vet-approved food whose cats have had an incredible range of health problems, often including overeating and poorly balanced diets. The major difference I've seen between cats in the US and cats in the UK is that in the UK it is considered inhumane to keep your cat indoors. We don't have rabies over here, and we don't have Lymes Diseases (except nowadays in a very limited area), and we don't really have too much in the way of predatory wildlife, so it's a very, very different situation here than in the US where there are such different environmental factors that make being an outdoor cat more dangerous in most areas. In the 12 years I lived in the US, I never really got over how normal huge obesity is in cats, or how many people I knew whose cats were in appallingly poor health. Seeing a fat cat here is not usual - though it does happen - because they're mostly spending a great deal of time bounding around outdoors, eating voles, mice, etc

[roboticminotaur]

My cat gets a whole lot of unnatural shit, like A/C in the summer and heat in the winter; protection from rain and wind, and sometimes a large hairless great ape scratches her neck and flicks a nylon rope around the room so she can chase it. No one thinks any of that is wrong, even though all of it is completely unnatural, and not the sort of environment a cat was "meant" (whatever "meant" means) to live in. But a vegan diet? Noooo, that's not natural. I should continue to feed her normal cat kibble -- which is, of course, itself entirely unnatural.

I'm not attacking you specifically, I'm just using your comment as a forum to vent my frustration on this issue, because I really don't know what it means when people say that certain things are "natural" or "unnatural", or "meant" to be or not "meant" to be. It's not clear to me that anyone really does know what those words mean, or why it's bad to be "unnatural".

[kari_louise]

its also got euthanized dogs and cats in their pet food! thats soooo natural right? no

[kari_louise]

i agree completely! cats and dogs arent meant to be domesticated but its too late to throw them all back into the wild. we have to give them the best life in the unnatural envoirnment they live in.

i mean a lot of people have wheat and soy allergies so then they shouldnt have to be vegan its ok for them to eat chicken to get protein?

psh i think people just make excuses to not make their pets vegan