winograd@nbires.UUCP (Steve Winograd) (02/24/84)
I am investigating a vegetarian diet for my cats and would like comments on
two areas of concern:
1. Practical -- Is there any commercially available cat food with no meat?
Does anyone have experience in making home-made vegetarian cat food?
Can cats thrive on such food?
2. Philosophical -- I don't believe in killing animals for food for humans
and I feel bad about the fact that someone kills animals for my cats'
food. It seems to me that meat is, alas, the natural food for cats.
Nature has equipped them for hunting (acute sense of smell, great
sensitivity to noises made by prey, stealth, speed) and killing
(sharp front claws to catch prey, strong legs and rear claws to rip
them open, specialized teeth for tearing them up, etc). These physical
traits are accompanied by a powerful hunting instinct (most of their
play is really hunting behavior). Is it reasonable to consider a
meatless diet for such creatures? On the other hand, their natural prey
is small rodents and birds, not the meat byproducts, liver and
animal fat in most commercial cat food (ever seen a cat kill a cow?).
Steve Winograd
{allegra|ucbvax}!nbires!winogradtrb@masscomp.UUCP (02/28/84)
I definitely saw within the past few months on one of the scientific shows on PBS a piece which claimed that cats will go blind if forced to live on a diet without meat because there is some stuff that they get from meat that they just can't get from vegetables and they can't synthesize. Cats are carnivores, you know, that means that they eat meat. If you DO put your little beast on a vegetarian diet, investigate this and at least feed them some minimal amount of the meatstuff that will keep them from going blind. If you love your cat, why would you force it to eat fucking tofu and sprouts? Andy Tannenbaum Masscomp Inc Westford MA (617) 692-6200 x274
ariels@orca.UUCP (02/28/84)
One of my cats happens to LOVE tofu, and rice. In fact, she'll sit by the stove mewling and begging whenever I cook rice. The other cat thinks she's nuts. HE likes macaroni and spaghetti. But I wouldn't even consider putting them on a veggie diet. They are by nature carnivores, and I wouldn't want to wake up minus my toes. :-) But seriously, I don't feel I can force a natural carnivore to be a vegetarian just to satisfy my philosophies. If I didn't want meat in the house, I'd get a veggie pet. Like a budgie (parrakeet).
pilotti@sdcsla.UUCP (03/02/84)
I found my cat at about one month old crawling with fleas and shivering
from lack of nourishment. It turned out one of the neighbor kids
(about 10 years old) told us that she got the cat from a "Chinese man" and
that the cat was also Chinese and "only ate rice". I didn't ask if she
cooked the rice before feeding it to the cat.
(The cat is now healthy and eats *everything* and *anything*, much to the
chagrin of our other cat.)
KEITH F PILOTTI -- UC SanDiego Cognitive Science Laboratory
...{philabs,ucbvax}!sdcsvax!sdcsla!pilotti (UUCP)
pilotti@NPRDC (ARPA)