pet food - are your pets vegan?

[VeganDeVil]

Does your vegan lifestyle extend to your dog or cat? (Or any other pet, for that matter?)

 

My cat is not vegan, mostly because I am on a pretty tight budget these days and I can get giant bags of cat food from the local supermarket for $10. The only vegan cat food I've found is on-line, and is quite expensive.

 

Also, I'm unclear about how healthy or unhealthy it is for animals to be force-fed a vegan diet. Anyone know anything about this? I would prefer, given I had the finances, not to support animal cruelty in any way...... this is the one big way in which I still do.....

 

Just curious for thoughts and experiences.

[Im Your Man]

Also, I'm unclear about how healthy or unhealthy it is for animals to be force-fed a vegan diet. Anyone know anything about this?

 

 

Well, my opinion is that dogs are omnivores and can be healthy on just meat, just vegan-based food, or both, like leftovers from the family dinner.

As for cats, they are true carnivores. But : cat food, like dog food, is deficient, poor quality meat, irradiated, cooked, etc, and therefore fortified, with everything, including B12. It will be the samething if you feed your cat with vegan cat food which is fortified too.

 

An experiment made on hundreds of cats and over a period of 3 generations, showed that cats fed with raw meat were healthy and had plenty of jolly kittens,

 

while those fed with only cooked meat (not fortified) were all becoming sick and weak, those of the 2nd generation were dying of diseases or premature aging, dying while giving birth to weak kittens or unborn ones. The kittens of the third generation didn't live more than a few days.

[Marcina]

I just want to say one thing about budget cat food.

 

It's very high in magnesium and ash. I know you're having problems with money now, but it's important you spend a little more on cat food or you're gonna have vet bills on your hands which = more money.

 

Cheap cat foods such as generic supermarket brands, and even Whiskas are often too high in fat, too high in protein, or too high in ash. High ash foods cause FLUTD - Feline lower urinary tract disease. It's very painful for the cat and often expensive to fix. It causes struvite crystals to form in the urine. Male cats are a higher risk for it than female cats.

 

There are some good pet foods out there that don't cost too much. Purina is a good brand, for example. (Cat chow, Friskies, etc.) Whiskas is too high in fat. It's like Mcdonald's for cats :/ so stay away from that one.

[VeganDeVil]

I just want to say one thing about budget cat food.

 

It's very high in magnesium and ash. I know you're having problems with money now, but it's important you spend a little more on cat food or you're gonna have vet bills on your hands which = more money.

 

Cheap cat foods such as generic supermarket brands, and even Whiskas are often too high in fat, too high in protein, or too high in ash. High ash foods cause FLUTD - Feline lower urinary tract disease. It's very painful for the cat and often expensive to fix. It causes struvite crystals to form in the urine. Male cats are a higher risk for it than female cats.

 

There are some good pet foods out there that don't cost too much. Purina is a good brand, for example. (Cat chow, Friskies, etc.) Whiskas is too high in fat. It's like Mcdonald's for cats :/ so stay away from that one.

Oh wow, I didn't know! Thanks for the info.

[Fallen_Horse]

My mom's cat is vegan (female short hair Siamese) and has been for about a year now. She makes the cats food every few days from the recipe from vegancats.com. She throws in the mix and the garbanzo beans, etc. The cat seems to eat it fine, but if it gets too old then the cat won't eat any more of it...

[sinisterkungfu]

I just want to say one thing about budget cat food.

 

It's very high in magnesium and ash. I know you're having problems with money now, but it's important you spend a little more on cat food or you're gonna have vet bills on your hands which = more money.

 

Cheap cat foods such as generic supermarket brands, and even Whiskas are often too high in fat, too high in protein, or too high in ash. High ash foods cause FLUTD - Feline lower urinary tract disease. It's very painful for the cat and often expensive to fix. It causes struvite crystals to form in the urine. Male cats are a higher risk for it than female cats.

 

There are some good pet foods out there that don't cost too much. Purina is a good brand, for example. (Cat chow, Friskies, etc.) Whiskas is too high in fat. It's like Mcdonald's for cats :/ so stay away from that one.

 

 

One of my cats had that problem, and it kept recurring. He has to eat the expensive Purina U/R food you buy at the vet now, but it's totally worked. He hasn't had the problem again since he started on it, 4 years ago. Before that I had taken him to the vet at least 3 times for severe UT infections.

[Im Your Man]

 

 

One of my cats had that problem, and it kept recurring. He has to eat the expensive Purina U/R food you buy at the vet now, but it's totally worked. He hasn't had the problem again since he started on it, 4 years ago. Before that I had taken him to the vet at least 3 times for severe UT infections.

So Purina (and other brands) make food that makes the cats ill, so then they can sell their medical food which cost 5 times more. Good way to make profits. Kind of like if McDonalds were selling antidotes as desserts with their happy fatty meals.

[sinisterkungfu]

 

 

One of my cats had that problem, and it kept recurring. He has to eat the expensive Purina U/R food you buy at the vet now, but it's totally worked. He hasn't had the problem again since he started on it, 4 years ago. Before that I had taken him to the vet at least 3 times for severe UT infections.

So Purina (and other brands) make food that makes the cats ill, so then they can sell their medical food which cost 5 times more. Good way to make profits. Kind of like if McDonalds were selling antidotes as desserts with their happy fatty meals.

 

 

Evidently. This crap costs like $18 for a 4lb bag.

[CollegeB]

I agree with i'm your man on this. Dogs can do fine as vegans, I don't believe the same for cats in the long run.

[Duncan_Idaho]

Cats and dogs are not meant to be vegans. Death is a part of our world, carnivores too. Killing is not wrong in nature. It is wrong to bring something to life just to eat it. Using living creatures is wrong. A lion kills to eat, he won't breed animals in captivity. We humans were not born meat eaters. Meat eating is for us just an ill conceived habit. I buy meat for my dog with the same vigour with which I refuse to eat chocolate bars with '2% milk powder'.

[Marcina]

My mom's cat is vegan (female short hair Siamese) and has been for about a year now. She makes the cats food every few days from the recipe from vegancats.com. She throws in the mix and the garbanzo beans, etc. The cat seems to eat it fine, but if it gets too old then the cat won't eat any more of it...

 

I don't mean to rag on your mom, but that doesn't seem like a good idea. Vegan cat food at least has synthetic essential amino acids in it.. Homemade food doesn't. Cats need a very high protein diet.. and they can't synthesize many proteins themselves.. Hence why in the wild they only eat meat. Homemade foods tend to be difficult to balance properly. Most of them are too high in phosphorous, and can cause bone problems down the road.

 

Cats are very different from us, and shouldn't be made to eat what we eat, in my opinion.

[Marcina]

Once, my friend gave Bif a siamese fighting fish as a gift and she tried to feed it a banana. It was so funny! She named her fishie and everything.