Cats not having claws… They’re defenseless animals without them :/ would you rather they bite you with their kitty germ mouths or claw you when they’re telling you to fuck off
Yeah, so something you should know about vegan cat food, is that none of them properly fulfill all the cats needs. They can claim it, and they can potentially even keep a cat alive and mostly nutritionally balanced, but it varies from cat to cat, and food to food.
And honestly, they are obligate carnivores. Just because you might be able to safely feed certain cats vegan foods, doesn’t mean that they should be.
And no, cats that eat vegan are absolutely not going to have equivalent or better health results. You’re literally feeding them things they weren’t designed to eat.
I don’t have time to look up the studies that have been done on it, but you’re just not correct. In the studies I’ve seen they tend to have equivalent or better health outcomes. If you find research that says otherwise I’m open to reading it, but just your intuition that feeding them things they wouldn’t eat in the wild means they can’t be healthy doesn’t cut it for me
The studies you’re talking about were small, and typically self reported by the pet owners. If they were a human study they wouldn’t be enough to go off of.
“However, there is little evidence of adverse effects arising in dogs and cats on vegan diets. In addition, some of the evidence on adverse health impacts is contradicted in other studies. Additionally, there is some evidence of benefits, particularly arising from guardians’ perceptions of the diets. Given the lack of large population-based studies, a cautious approach is recommended. If guardians wish to implement a vegan diet, it is recommended that commercial foods are used.”
Thanks for linking the review! Of course more and better research is needed, but a cautious approach like they recommend makes sense to me. If you feed a cat a vegan diet, you need to monitor their urine for crystals (there are special litters that do this, or stuff you can put on their regular litter), and you should know you can’t switch them overnight. But it is possible for cats to be healthy and happy on a vegan diet.
Your intuition that vegan cat food is as healthy for cats as ice cream sandwiches are to humans is not enough, and when you look at the nutrition content it doesn’t even make sense. An ice cream sandwich with all the necessary micro- and macro- nutrients a human needs to thrive would be a better comparison, and guess what, a nutritionally complete ice cream sandwich would be fine! I’ve gone for long stretches where I eat nothing but meal replacement shakes like plenny and huel because I’m lazy, and it’s fine. You can find at least one person on reddit who’s done it very strictly for years with no problems.
if you’re going to fight this battle, you also need to fight it against non-vegan cat kibbles, many of which are worse for cats (i.e. less nutritionally complete) than vegan kibbles like benevo or evolution
i’m genuinely curious because outside of spiritualism type nonsense the information i’ve found in online and in-person american vegan communities has been pretty solid, and i’d like to know if i’ve been lied to.
I’d be opening up a can of worms that I’m not sure I have the mental energy to organize, source, and talk about in length right now. I will say that if you’ve found a tolerant and science-accepting vegan group, that’s super awesome and honestly not as common as it should be.
Here’s a few veeeery summarized points:
Humans are not made for veganism. It can be dangerous and make you very sick, so you need a lot of education on nutrition and a lot of non-natural dietary supplements to make it work. Because of this, forcing veganism on children is also considered child abuse by law in some countries. Either way, you should always talk to your doctor.
Healthy veganism is a privileged diet. The logistics for growing, transporting, and preserving food for a vegan diet balanced enough to not get sick is a big deal, and everything gets expensive and out-of-reach for many. If veganism isn’t an option for everyone, non-vegan practices will always be a thing. In which case, vegans shouldn’t be snobs towards non-vegans.
Grazing animals are actually very important to healthy soil and crops. And that means controlling where they graze. And at that point, you’re going against what a lot of vegans stand for. And honestly, at that point just use the animals for meat, too.
Vegans often condone practices that are unhealthy to humans or animals, and that kill off a lot of animals in order to sustain their agriculture. Not to mention the absolute need for pesticides to sustain large populations, and pesticides can kill off a lot of things on their own. Veganism is (usually) about not harming animals, but agriculture always kills a lot of animals; so one like myself will argue why many vegans are such snobs towards non-vegans, as if veganism is more “pure” than non-veganism
The average vegan diet is safer/less deficient than the standard american diet. Most major diet orgs agree a well planned vegan diet is appropriate for all stages of human life
The cheapest foods are vegan - grains, legumes, starches. and they get you the majority of the way to a balanced diet. It’s not that hard or expensive to get from them to a 100% well rounded diet
Just let the grazing animals live please. Live and let live, so long as it harms none do what you wish, etc. Buffalo/etc don’t need humans to make them go to certain spots to graze
most crops go towards feeding animals in animal agriculture. Less crop deaths is better, so if you actually want to reduce them you should go vegan and/or grow your own food
i agree that many vegans have wacky/woowoo/incorrect beliefs and it’s a real shame, but a broken clock is right twice a day
I don’t have time to look up the research on this stuff, I know that last I checked the first point is documented on the wikipedia page for veganism (i.e. It links to the statement by the dietetic orgs).
It’s not hard or very costly to get from those to a complete diet without animal products
I don’t know enough about to say with certainty, but I’m pretty sure most farmland is not grazed.
should be pretty easy to find info on, look up how much of our crops go to animal feed. If I’m wrong I’m happy to read studies that show we don’t do that, but the studies I’ve read inform my position. Due to how trophic levels work, animal products are always going to be an inefficient source of calories
Yeah idk what this person is on about, the vast majority of vegans are completely regular people that just want to reduce their environmental impact, you wouldn’t even know they were vegan unless you asked.
I think a big issue with lots of vegans is that they don’t know how capitalism works. People think that capitalism is just supply and demand, so if people don’t buy dairy or meat less animals will be slaughtered. But that just isn’t how it works. They can just raise the demand by making Got Milk campaigns and lobbying the government. Not buying a steak at the grocery store is not going to change the behavior of a multi-million dollar company even if hundreds of people go vegan.
Well obviously hundreds of people going vegan isn’t going to make much of a difference, because we have billions of people.
That doesn’t mean an individual vegan can’t make a difference by spreading their lifestyle.
It’s just like any moral improvement: an individual should not expect that their individual actions are going to change the world.
Also yes, there’s no 1-to-1 correspondence between more vegans in a particular neighborhood, and cows not being born and then slaughtered. It’s understood that these two pools are too far abstracted for tracing farm animals to meat eaters.
But the same problem is true of voting too. So if a vegan shouldn’t expect to make a difference by converting others to veganism, then a citizen shouldn’t expect to make a difference by voting either.
Scratching post plus some gentle tutoring did the trick for my two. I like that they have something to scratch - it looks comfy as fuck, they stretch while clawing stuff.
I have a some variety of scratcher on every corner of the couch. I have some rope ones, carpet ones, a low one. My cat really just prefers to scratch the couch. Any attempt to persuade her to scratch the scratchers, she sees as a fun game and scratches the couch more.
With my two, when they were ready to scratch the wrong thing, I simply picked them up and put them near the scratching post. No sweet talk, no scolding either - I didn’t want to encourage them to scratch the furniture for attention.
I taught my cats to stop clawing me when they kneaded just by teaching them the word “claws” (but since my GF was Peruvian, we used spanish to talk to the cats and it was “uñas”).
All I did was bring their claws out a little, rub my finger across the tips so that my fingerprint vibrated the claws (to draw their attention there) then said “uñas”. And repeated it.
Then when we’d be cuddling they’d be kneading and if they started including their claws in the kneading I’d just say “uñas” and they’d retract their claws and keep kneading.
No operant conditioning required. I used a little classical conditioning to teach them the word, then mere mention of the word was enough because they already knew the claws were uncomfortable to other people. They were just extending their claws unconsciously while kneading.
My wife showed me some advice online to hold the scruff of their neck in your mouth like a mama cat would while clipping. I tried it and I was able to clip all the claws on my 23 pound cat by myself. He barely freaked out and he’s a huge baby scaredy cat about everything.
Also not a nut, nor a vegetable, nor a vegetarian. I’m all for a declawing ban. It is utterly cruel to value furniture over the wellbeing of a living creature.
If you’ve got nice furniture that you’re not willing to sacrifice to a cat, DON’T GET A CAT. Mutilating a cat just so that you can be close to said cat is fucked up. Let it live with people who can take care of it without having to alter it.
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