Vegetarian cat food (read post first)

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I'm curious about peoples viewpoints on this. Many vitamins, amino-acids and other nutritents can be synthsised from plant or fungi where previously it was easiest to just eat meat.

I know that cats are obligate carnivores, I'm not asking this question from ignorance. I'm just thinking that, as many of the required vitamins, amino-acids and other nutritents in cat foods are artificially created and added after cooking (as cooking destroys many of them), what is the difference between artifical meat with these things added and real meat with these things added?

I also understand a raw food diet may be the best diet for cats (as the vitamins, amino-acids and other nutritents aren't damaged) but I can see that it's difficult on many levels. Making sure that the cat gets enough of what it needs is hard and it's also easier to open a can or a packet of cat biscuts.

Also, if anyone has any knowledge of a real cat surviving/thriving on a vegetarian diet I would like to know.

I'm just curious and I'm asking here because people are open minded and generally seem to have diverse experience.

I have a very old cat who had kidney disease. She's been five years on a meat free diet, and her hair has grown back, she's put on weight, and her kidneys are testing in the "normal" range. Apparently different protiens can sometimes help such cats. However, I think an organic raw food diet would probably have done her good as well... I couldn't afford it though.

I put normal cat food is fine.

I am vegan myself and have met people with moral objections to feeding their cats non-vegetarian foods.

As you mentioned, cats need specific nutrients. Taurine is what it is called.

Sure you could supplement a cat with it through vegetarian food but it is difficult to know exactly how the cat is feeling and how well it is absorbed.

Best to stick to natures way of nutrition i guess.

Vegetarian cat food can be really healthy so i guess mixing it with fish would have positive results.

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My daughter is vegan and she refused to give her cats vegetarian food because she said, they wouldn't be getting what they needed by eating it. She was working at PETA at the time she said this to me, here in Norfolk. Of course she doesn't work for PETA anymore but she still believes in animal rights and she still feels the same about giving cats vegetarian food. I haven't researched it myself but I do believe she has and knows what she's talking about.

Thanks everyone for their replys so far.

Personally I believe that a high meat diet is good for a cat, being as they are obligate carnivores, but I wanted to know what other people think.

My Mum cooked for all the animals we had when I was growing up (mince and a small portion of pearl rice boiled together) and they all had healthy shiny coats (and lived fairly long happy lives). Currently our cat and dog eat pet food (the cat a mixture of wet and dry and the dog just dry with some chicken in it sometimes). The cat used to be cooked for but was given tinned cat food while we went away about two years back and won't return to eating the previous stuff.

Anyways, I'm moving out of my Mums place some time in the future and I was wondering about what would be best for the kitten I'm planning on getting. I was thinking about cooking for it (same as my Mum used to) but I won't be able to let this cat roam totally free because of where I'm probably going, so I'm worried about the nutrition. My Mum lives in the country and so it's fairly safe to let a cat run about the fields. I think it's possible that the cats we've had may have suplemented their diet with mice, rats and birds. So, that in mind, does anyone know if I should add suplements to this food.

mgran, thanks for letting me know. I looked around online and most of the information I found was on sites selling the product (either a supliment or a complete food). I don't know what to think about vegetarian cat food. I've seen some forum posts about one food called evolution that caused a lot of sickness (UTI's and other issues) and some deaths (some of these showed no symtoms apparently) in cats. Also, I read about a female lion cub who refused to eat meat and thus those who were caring for her had to figure out a vegetarian diet but I don't know if it's true or not though. I don't know enough about it as of yet.

PatrickNeville, just to let you know taurine is just one of many, cats also need methionine and cysteine (amino-acids), arginine (unsure of reason), lysine (skin and tissue development), arachidonic acid (because their bodies can't make it), vitamin A and B vitamins among many others. I'm a vegetarian myself but I'm not sure what is best. I don't want to hurt an animal in my care.

Considering cats have been around much longer than us and there are no doubt long lists of things that we still don't know about them, I think we should 'stick to the program' when it comes to their diets

I have never understood the morality in a vegan diet, though I agree it is generally healthier. Cats enjoy meat. I assume evolution has fine tuned their metabolism and digestive absorption towards a high meat diet. Given them a vegan substitute might be okay, but you really don't know how that is going to affect hormones, the biota in the tract, and the cat's mental and immune state. Food has been shown to have effects beyond basic nutrition in people. I doubt if that has been determined for cats.

no matter what we humans feed cats, they have been widely known to eat what they need to eat, given half a chance- permitted free rein outdoors, cats often will hunt for live meat to eat, and will chew grass to deal with fur and undigestible mouse parts that they need to empty their stomachs of.

my vote: "I know someone who fed their cats a vegetarian diet and they were fine."

My cat ate vegetarian food for about six months and seemed to be fine. He hunted for mice and rats occasionally but mostly lived on the food that was prepared for him.

His coat was a little less shiny than it is when he is eating meaty food, and shiny coat is an indicator of good health as it means the animal is getting enough oil. He eats more frequently when I give him (mostly all-natural/organic) kibble cat food than he did when he was eating vegan.

I was feeding him rice, beans/nuts/legumes, quinoia, always with nutritional yeast (for vitamins & taurine), Braggs (liquid amino acids) and oil.

I don't know... It might be possible if one were extremely careful about providing all the needed nutrients, but it sounds risky. Cats are carnivores. Imagine feeding a lion a vegetarian diet!

On a similar note, in a recent issue of Reptiles magazine there was an article by a veterinarian about a lady who tried to put a Burmese python on a vegetarian diet by cutting up veggies for him... Lol.

I think normal cat food is fine. Not just that cats need the taurine in meat, but also, it's what their ancestors ate, and what their relatives eat in the wild. It's like what their bodies are 'tuned' to eating. Besides, doesn't stuff like grass sometimes serve to make themselves sick and cough up hairballs? I think it would possibly be like feeding herbivores, like cows or horses meat.

why the f**k would you want to force a cat to be vegetarian?

bloody humans

About normal cat food, the meat used is usually waste products of the human grade meat production. Also, it can have sugar to preserve colour (which is not good for cats and they can't taste it anyways). A cat hunting usually goes for the best meat of the animal it kills, I'm supprised that so many said that normal cat food is fine based on this.

Personally I think that cooking for your cat is better because you actually know what they're eating. And it does result in healthy cats, all my cats had shiny, soft and all round good coats, they all lived a good long time too.

About when I said about the raw food diet, I didn't think to specify a cat raw diet versus a human one. A raw food diets regarding cats can mean (and was meant in this instance), a diet where raw small animal corpses (mice, rats or rabbits) are given to the cat.

montjuic, I just wanted to know what information the people here had about this. As I'm sure I mentioned in my first post, in cat foods the nutrients are usually added artifically due to being (generally) distroyed during the cooking process (or may not be present to begin with). Bearing that in mind, I wondered what the difference might be. This is just for to gather information on my part. I did have this knee jerk reaction the first time a person said about a vegetarian cat diet as well but I always want to be informed before I blow an idea out of the water.