Why I am not a vegan

[Monica]

Monica, what do you think about vegan pet food? I've been thinking about whether or not I should put my cat on such a diet but am concerned for obvious reasons.

That's a dilemma. Here is the earlier discussion on this difficult topic:

But you feed meat to your cats and dogs, don't you? Isn't that hypocritical?
Post #643 Aaron
Post #644 Monica
Post #647 Monica and Oceania (and continues in post #656)

I used to be fiercely against feeding dogs and cats vegetarian, because they are obviously carnivorous animals. Just look at those teeth! To deny them the food their bodies were designed for is as illogical as feeding meat to humans, who obviously aren't carnivorous at all. (Just look at our teeth!)

More recently, I have met many vegans who have vibrantly healthy vegan dogs, and even some who claim to have successfully switched their cats to vegan!

There are several brands of vegan doggie kibble available also, but I haven't been totally happy with the ingredients, so I try to make my own dog food as much as possible. Historically, dogs were fed table scraps and learned to adapt to a largely vegetarian diet. While cats still know how to hunt rodents and birds, modern domesticated dogs starve out on the streets, were it not for finding scraps of food thrown out by humans. Their ancestors hunted in packs. Most dogs are incapable of hunting and killing prey on their own. That's why stray dogs tend to roam in packs, but they still don't seem to remember how to hunt.

So the consensus seems to be that dogs can be vegetarian, or even vegan, but cats can't. The basis of this conclusion is the taurine issue - a nutrient that cats supposedly need but dogs don't. That is a myth, however. I recently read Obligate Carnivore and it opened my eyes! So now I have a renewed goal of switching all my dogs and cats over. The dogs are easy but I don't yet have the confidence to switch my cats. I am open to learning though, and am currently engaged in a conversation with the vegans who have vegan cats.

My local farmer's market has eggs from chickens who truly do roam freely (in contrast to those in grocery stores labeled 'cage-free' but are actually just larger cages and just as cruel - gotta be careful with egg labels!) so I cook them for my dogs, in coconut oil, then add cooked potatoes, some veggies like squash, a dash of salt and some nutritional yeast. They love it!