A??? for vegetarians that have pets....

[jeca]

Umm, just out of my own curiousity if you have a cat or dog and you are vegetarian or vegan what do your pets eat?
I mean dogs and cats eat meat right, so do you give them meat or does that mean yoru animals are vegetarians too??
I knwo it's a silly question but I never thought about it before and now I wanna know. :

[mamangazelle]

I am vegetarian, but buy meat for my cat (she eats a raw diet). A cat will DIE if she doesn't eat meat. I have heard that dogs can live without eating meat though.

[tricia80]

yeah cats are carnivores and need certain chemicals from meat... altho now they do have vegetarian mixes for cats but they are expensive..

dogs can be vegetarians with less problems.. and their food is cheaper vegetarian style... :LOL

[charmarty]

OMG Jeca!!! You were SO reading my mind!!! No joke, just this morning when I woke, I got to thinking about a snake my mom had when I was growing up. I loved him so much, he hung out in the pocket of my housecoat as long as I was home. If it was 30 degres celcius outside, I would still be wearing my housecoat over top pf my clothes just to hang out with him. '

Anyways, as he got older, he had to eat baby mice. Alive. EWWWWWW. He soon became a little more agressive and I could no longer hang out with him in my pocket ( he got a bit too big!And we had a teacup Pom puppy around and the snake thought LUNCH!) So, Long winded story short....I was thinking if any vegans would ever own a snake that they would have to feed it live animals.

gee....I can sure talk eh?

[polka123]

I know many veggie folks that feed their dogs/cats a BARF diet
http://www.touchmoon.com/dotters/raw/index.shtml

http://www.randifredricks.com/dogs/barf.htm

[Yooper]

I am vegan and have two cats. They eat meat. I have struggled with this for years. First of all, I only buy 100% organic, free range, human grade, chicken cat food. It costs a fortune and I have to have it shipped to me. It is the closest I can find to sticking to my beliefs. I adopt only older "unadoptable" cats and my older one simply cannot handle the vege cat formula. I have bought it, cooked it, and fed it to my cats, but she failed to thrive on it, hence the cat food. I justify it (sort of) by the fact that we (humans) domesticated animals that were never meant to be housepets, then we did not take care of them which led to the sticky overpopulation problem we have. Therefore, an animal rights proponent, such as myself, at the very least should be taking care of some of these animals we messed up. In my case that means compromising my values. It is a lesser of two evils sort of thing..... If I refuse to feed my cats meat, I would need to give them back to the shelter where they would be fed even less humane meat anyway. Or I could let them go and they could take out half the neighborhood's songbird population......

[Happypants]

I am a vegetarian (vegan for ~12 years until very recently). I had a Border Collie when a was a kid, and fed her the dry veggie dog food when I first got her. She did fine on it, but it was pricey, and eventually I gave up and fed her regular dog food, which she clearly preferred. She did fine on that, too, except she got a bit porky. :LOL

The last dog I had, who died about a year ago, I fed regular dog food, too. I wouldn't consider feeding a cat a vegetarian diet. I justify it much the way yooper does, and also that a large portion of the "real" food is by-product anyway. Not that I would eat meaty by-product myself, but then again, it doesn't make my mouth water the way it does a cat's.

I don't currently have a dog, and due to a recent lease I just signed won't be able to have one for over a year. I do have two horses who happen to share my eating philosophy (more or less) (okay, I don't eat grass but you know what I mean) so at this point I don't have to face the dilemma

[boricuaqueen327]

I am no longer a vegetarian but when I was, I still had no problems feeding my dogs meat. I feed them what they eat naturally. I wouldn't feed my rabbits meat so why should I feed my dogs only veggies? But I do know that dogs can live on a vege food much better than cats can.

[Wilhemina]

I am veg., but my cats eat meat. Never considered otherwise as they are carnivores.

[Yooper]

Well......techinically dog and cat food is not their "natural diet" either...... It is usually the sludge off the bottom of the slaughterhouse floor mixed in with a bunch of "filler" that actually makes up more of the food than then meaty sludge. Cats never naturally eat corn....yet it is in (and constitutes a large portion of) many cat foods. Also, in order to feed a cat a veggie diet, one has to add synthetic taurine. Taurine is naturally only found in meat. But since most cat food manufacturers use little meat and none of good quality, synthetic taurine is added to commercial cat food too. As I said before, I do feed my cat meat, but I do not rely on the natural food argument because there is nothing "natural" about a house cat or dogs life from thier food to their environment to their medical care.

[Rollermommy]

We arent true vegetarians, but we dont eat meat hardly ever. But we do feed our animals good dry food plus raw mean and steamed veggies. Like what's already been said, they are carnivores...I however am not

[boricuaqueen327]

It's true about dog food and cat food not being thier natural diet. The ideal would be to feed them raw meat, bones, organs, etc. And it's definitely true about most dog/cat food being nasty sludge and filler. Thank goodness there's some good foods in the market.

[lunadoula]

DP is vegetarian and we feed the kitties regular cat food. Sometimes I bring home raw chicken liver though and she can't look at it w/out . Actually, *I* can barely look at it without gagging.

[mamangazelle]

Originally Posted by lunadoula

DP is vegetarian and we feed the kitties regular cat food. Sometimes I bring home raw chicken liver though and she can't look at it w/out . Actually, *I* can barely look at it without gagging.

I can relate: when I buy chicken (or poultry) necks, kidneys or legs, I am OK, but once, I bought a veal heart. :Puke . I could not touch it or look at it in order to cut it. I will never, ever buy that again.