Vegetarian cats.
One of the questions I get asked fairly frequently, usually by fellow vegetarians, is whether my cats are on a vegetarian/vegan diet as well. The answer is no, and today the question resulted in a diatribe on what a horrible, ignorant animal caretaker I am.
My cats are not vegetarian specifically because I am not ignorant. I worked with big cats for several years, and have seen up close and personal what a nutrient-deficient or taurine-deficient diet will do to them. Hair loss, bone density loss, a destroyed digestive system, loose teeth, bleeding gums, blindness, palsy, muscle atrophy, organ failure, brain damage, death. I watched lions, tigers, Savannas, Caracals, Servals, jaguars, leopards, pumas, and bobcats die all the time because some ignorant asshat didn't learn what to feed them and the sanctuary didn't get them in time to save them.
The usual culprit was commercially manufactured dry cat food, which is garbage - literally. It's made of animals not suitable for human food, and when the meat from those animals is too decayed or tainted to use the corpses are boiled and rendered for stock and fat, grain chaff, processed corn, ash, and artificial additives and chemical colour. Big cats haven't been domesticated long enough for their digestive system to be able to break that stuff down, and it will rip through their system like shrapnel. Domestic cats have, unfortunately, adapted to eating commercially processed cat food, but just because it keeps them alive doesn't mean it's good for them either. All the bad stuff they can't digest becomes stored in their organs, in their fat cells, and it can get into their bloodstream and make them very sick.
The secondary culprit with the big cats was a steady diet of ground raw meat. Nutrient deficiencies, parasites, muscle atrophy, intestinal impaction, heart problems, calcium and potassium deficiences, seizures, death - those are a few of the major problems. The main one being that big cats are carnivores, preditors, and built to digest entire parts of animals, and in a very real way, their system needs all those parts to function properly. A diet of nothing but ground raw meat will kill a big cat just as cruelly as a diet of kibble. No matter which way it goes, both diets will cause lasting, permanent and often debilitating damage to the cat's body and system.
The last, and thankfully least, culprit were the big cats who came in on a totally vegetarian or vegan diet - usually done because the ignorant owner believed that by not feeding them any meat or animal products, it would make them more domesticated, more tractable, less predatorial. This is a complete myth that resulted in a lot of dead cats. Big cats cannot survive on a vegan diet. Domesticated cats can survive on it. How well, the jury is still out on. I'm optimistic about it, though.
Depending on what deficiencies a big cat came in with, what the sanctuary fed them varied based on what they needed. The workers had to learn what vitamins and nutrients are absolutely necessary to the big cats, how to spot vitamin or nutrient deficiency, and what to do to halt that deficiency. How much, how fast, how strong. Staying awake for two days nasotube feeding an animal that's come in with its body cannibalizing itself due to inadequate nutrition, holding it as its organs fail because they've been starved for too long and injecting nutrient-rich saline directly into the organs as a last ditch attempt to save the animal, watching as it dies when there's nothing more that can be done - and knowing that this was something completely preventable if the owner had done any research at all - that's the most powerful incentive on the planet. I'm a big proponent of 'Read the fucking manual first', because I want to know - not think, know, that I am doing the best thing possible for any animal in my care.
I was a vegetarian before I got my cats. I looked up vegetarian cat food alternatives, and looked for data on how well cats did on it. I looked up ingredient lists, recipes, articles, talked to vets and nutrition specialists and zookeepers and holistic medicine practitioners. The data that was available in 1998 wasn't adequate. There were rumours of 'synthetic taurine' but no information anywhere about what it was or how it was made. Acamprosate is a synthetic taurine analog, but its main use is in alcohol dependency in humans - I have no idea if this is the 'synthetic taurine' available. Taurine is absolutely necessary to any cat's health - without it, the cat will die. It is found in meat. It is found in trace amounts in plants. Cats cannot get enough taurine from plant sources. Humans and other animals can synthesize it themselves - felines cannot. There is no long-term data on the health effects of synthetic taurine on cats, much less any data on cats fed synthetic taurine their entire lives versus those transitioned later in life.
There was no specific, long term data concerning vegetarian diets for cats. The only scientific study done was a study in Germany published by E. Kienzle and R. Engelhard - “A Field Study on the Nutrition of Vegetarian Dogs and Cats in Europe” in the Supplement to Compendium on Continuing Education for the Practicing Veterinarian, September of 2001. That study only used 8 cats, and did not go into detail on the cats prior diet history - and the study showed negative results. The University of Pennsylvania just finished the very first study done specifically on vegetarian diets for cats, this year. The results haven't been published yet. I'm very anxious to read it, and study what their control methods were and what the ages of the cats were when the study began and what they are now. What I want to see as proof positive that this kind of diet is healthy and beneficial to felines are geriatric cats, both those who've had a vegan diet their entire life and those who were transitioned, who are in good health, with clean health records.
Those are the kinds of records I looked at when deciding the diet for my cats. My cat's vet is vegan, a nutritionist, a holistic vet, and a proponent of raw food diets. She helped me do research both before and after my cats came into my life, and helped formulate the diet for my cats. I make their catfood, both the kibble and the wet food. Yes, there's raw meat in it. Free range, organic meat. I can't control the environmental variables where the animal was raised, but I can control which farms produce the meat my cats eat by being very particular about what I buy. I thought about using taurine supplements, but the ones on the market have a bunch of additive crap in them, and were produced using 'chicken meal' - and that term creeps me out because I know what it stands for. The taurine supplements also had other chemicals in it that my cat doesn't need, and there is no data on what effects those 'additional ingredients' may have when used long-term. The recipe for the diet I chose was worked out before I brought my cats home, and it's changed as they grew older and their dietary requirements changed. My cats are now 8 and 7 years of age, respectively. They are healthy with an absolutely clean medical history.
When I decided to have cats in my life, it wasn't a decision I made lightly. I'm a vegetarian. Cats are carnivores, and I didn't then know of any, or if there would ever be any, way to have them live healthy lives on an entirely vegetarian diet. The jury, as I said earlier, is still out on that until the results of the study done last year are published. Deciding whether to have cats meant, for me, studying the environment they'd be in and whether the housing, companionship, and diet would be best for them. I've made my choices based on what was in the best interest of my cats, with a background knowledge of feline nutritional requirements.
In the words of someone famous, "Ignorant, I ain't."
My cats are not vegetarian specifically because I am not ignorant. I worked with big cats for several years, and have seen up close and personal what a nutrient-deficient or taurine-deficient diet will do to them. Hair loss, bone density loss, a destroyed digestive system, loose teeth, bleeding gums, blindness, palsy, muscle atrophy, organ failure, brain damage, death. I watched lions, tigers, Savannas, Caracals, Servals, jaguars, leopards, pumas, and bobcats die all the time because some ignorant asshat didn't learn what to feed them and the sanctuary didn't get them in time to save them.
The usual culprit was commercially manufactured dry cat food, which is garbage - literally. It's made of animals not suitable for human food, and when the meat from those animals is too decayed or tainted to use the corpses are boiled and rendered for stock and fat, grain chaff, processed corn, ash, and artificial additives and chemical colour. Big cats haven't been domesticated long enough for their digestive system to be able to break that stuff down, and it will rip through their system like shrapnel. Domestic cats have, unfortunately, adapted to eating commercially processed cat food, but just because it keeps them alive doesn't mean it's good for them either. All the bad stuff they can't digest becomes stored in their organs, in their fat cells, and it can get into their bloodstream and make them very sick.
The secondary culprit with the big cats was a steady diet of ground raw meat. Nutrient deficiencies, parasites, muscle atrophy, intestinal impaction, heart problems, calcium and potassium deficiences, seizures, death - those are a few of the major problems. The main one being that big cats are carnivores, preditors, and built to digest entire parts of animals, and in a very real way, their system needs all those parts to function properly. A diet of nothing but ground raw meat will kill a big cat just as cruelly as a diet of kibble. No matter which way it goes, both diets will cause lasting, permanent and often debilitating damage to the cat's body and system.
The last, and thankfully least, culprit were the big cats who came in on a totally vegetarian or vegan diet - usually done because the ignorant owner believed that by not feeding them any meat or animal products, it would make them more domesticated, more tractable, less predatorial. This is a complete myth that resulted in a lot of dead cats. Big cats cannot survive on a vegan diet. Domesticated cats can survive on it. How well, the jury is still out on. I'm optimistic about it, though.
Depending on what deficiencies a big cat came in with, what the sanctuary fed them varied based on what they needed. The workers had to learn what vitamins and nutrients are absolutely necessary to the big cats, how to spot vitamin or nutrient deficiency, and what to do to halt that deficiency. How much, how fast, how strong. Staying awake for two days nasotube feeding an animal that's come in with its body cannibalizing itself due to inadequate nutrition, holding it as its organs fail because they've been starved for too long and injecting nutrient-rich saline directly into the organs as a last ditch attempt to save the animal, watching as it dies when there's nothing more that can be done - and knowing that this was something completely preventable if the owner had done any research at all - that's the most powerful incentive on the planet. I'm a big proponent of 'Read the fucking manual first', because I want to know - not think, know, that I am doing the best thing possible for any animal in my care.
I was a vegetarian before I got my cats. I looked up vegetarian cat food alternatives, and looked for data on how well cats did on it. I looked up ingredient lists, recipes, articles, talked to vets and nutrition specialists and zookeepers and holistic medicine practitioners. The data that was available in 1998 wasn't adequate. There were rumours of 'synthetic taurine' but no information anywhere about what it was or how it was made. Acamprosate is a synthetic taurine analog, but its main use is in alcohol dependency in humans - I have no idea if this is the 'synthetic taurine' available. Taurine is absolutely necessary to any cat's health - without it, the cat will die. It is found in meat. It is found in trace amounts in plants. Cats cannot get enough taurine from plant sources. Humans and other animals can synthesize it themselves - felines cannot. There is no long-term data on the health effects of synthetic taurine on cats, much less any data on cats fed synthetic taurine their entire lives versus those transitioned later in life.
There was no specific, long term data concerning vegetarian diets for cats. The only scientific study done was a study in Germany published by E. Kienzle and R. Engelhard - “A Field Study on the Nutrition of Vegetarian Dogs and Cats in Europe” in the Supplement to Compendium on Continuing Education for the Practicing Veterinarian, September of 2001. That study only used 8 cats, and did not go into detail on the cats prior diet history - and the study showed negative results. The University of Pennsylvania just finished the very first study done specifically on vegetarian diets for cats, this year. The results haven't been published yet. I'm very anxious to read it, and study what their control methods were and what the ages of the cats were when the study began and what they are now. What I want to see as proof positive that this kind of diet is healthy and beneficial to felines are geriatric cats, both those who've had a vegan diet their entire life and those who were transitioned, who are in good health, with clean health records.
Those are the kinds of records I looked at when deciding the diet for my cats. My cat's vet is vegan, a nutritionist, a holistic vet, and a proponent of raw food diets. She helped me do research both before and after my cats came into my life, and helped formulate the diet for my cats. I make their catfood, both the kibble and the wet food. Yes, there's raw meat in it. Free range, organic meat. I can't control the environmental variables where the animal was raised, but I can control which farms produce the meat my cats eat by being very particular about what I buy. I thought about using taurine supplements, but the ones on the market have a bunch of additive crap in them, and were produced using 'chicken meal' - and that term creeps me out because I know what it stands for. The taurine supplements also had other chemicals in it that my cat doesn't need, and there is no data on what effects those 'additional ingredients' may have when used long-term. The recipe for the diet I chose was worked out before I brought my cats home, and it's changed as they grew older and their dietary requirements changed. My cats are now 8 and 7 years of age, respectively. They are healthy with an absolutely clean medical history.
When I decided to have cats in my life, it wasn't a decision I made lightly. I'm a vegetarian. Cats are carnivores, and I didn't then know of any, or if there would ever be any, way to have them live healthy lives on an entirely vegetarian diet. The jury, as I said earlier, is still out on that until the results of the study done last year are published. Deciding whether to have cats meant, for me, studying the environment they'd be in and whether the housing, companionship, and diet would be best for them. I've made my choices based on what was in the best interest of my cats, with a background knowledge of feline nutritional requirements.
In the words of someone famous, "Ignorant, I ain't."
posted by Peregrine at 1:18 PM
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