Hi,



While I do understand the point of the article, sadly the author comes across as dishonest at times and clearly hasn’t researched the issue well enough. An example of the author’s dishonesty is in claiming “buy ethically sourced pet food”. There is no such thing as ethical exploitation and killing of innocent others and it’s very troubling to see that the author uses the rhetoric of the exploiters. Another example of the author’s dishonesty is in claiming “Think about how you’d feel living on just water and vitamins: you might survive, but you would feel pretty weak and you wouldn’t be too happy about it.” This is a complete false analogy and the author is guilty of fear mongering here.





About twenty years ago (reflecting back now), I raised my 3 cats vegan for about 3 years with no noticeable health problems for any of them. I would take them in for normal check-ups and the vet did not see any problems.



It isn't quick or necessarily easy to help them transition because of course the tastes and textures are new to them. So every week for months it was a process of replacing small portions of veg food for their normal meat food and spending a week observing them carefully as they eat and in all aspects of their behavior. The veg kibble was easier to exchange for their regular kibble. In time, the entirety of what they were provided was plant-based foods. It’s too much to go into detail about what types of foods and all of that but I do have some video I’d taken back then of the kitties. In the video they readily eat their vegan food and they look healthy. One of the kitties growled if you tried to take away his favorite food, cantaloupe. He did that with no other food including the regular commercial or even the “premium” quality (expensive) meat based foods he was given for a period of time. Another kitty often, though not always, eschewed meat based food altogether when a dish of each was put in front of her side-by-side.



The thing I will highlight is that it’s quite a bit of extra work to transition and maintain cats on a nutritionally supportive veg diet over just popping open cans and bags of commercial meat-based cat food.



I supplemented for the nutrients that they required (taurine, arachadonic acid (spelling?), vit A, etc, …I don’t remember this many years later the specifics). Eventually, since I then got myself into rescuing cats, and the new rescues had to be fed meat based foods (because that’s what they are used to being given by well meaning feeders and it’s because they just naturally prefer the smelly commercial meat based foods) the chore of separating the cats and the foods and the process of transitioning and etc, I ended up feeding them all inexpensive commercial meat based food. I chose to stop the veg food because of all that work and the fact that I had the rest of my busy life to keep in order.



I have known other people who have successfully raised vegan cats. One couple, for many years raised 7 vegan cats for as long as I kept in touch with them.



I also know people who have tried to raise vegan cats but who were unsuccessful. Apparently their kitties tastebuds were never quite able to acclimate to the veg foods they replaced their commercial meat-based foods with.



Finally, if you really want to learn about an eye opening true story, read up on Tyke, the lioness who naturally preferred vegetarian food.



Thanks for taking the time to read my comments.

Last edited by Sexy_Vegan; 12-23-2015 at 08:56 AM .