Being vegetarian or vegan is a personal choice, and often one that a person reaches out of their love and compassion for animals. But whilst you choose to eat a plant based diet, it is important to remember that your cat is an ‘obligate carnivore’ and they MUST eat meat. Unfortunately, no matter how good your moral intentions, feeding your cat a vegan diet is a recipe for disaster.
The Cats’ Unique Metabolism
Cats are unique, but heck you knew that already. Character aside though, cat digestion evolved along different lines to ours. Their ancestor cats survived by hunting small mammals and ate a meat-rich diet as a result. Their bodies learnt to be as efficient as possible and make the most of the available food (which was rats and mice). For thousands of years cats lived life as if all they had to eat is meat…because it was true…and their metabolism made no allowance for the need to turn vegan.
These metabolic adaptations are both a cats’ strength and their weakness (and why they are unable to detox and breakdown many human pharmaceuticals.) It’s why they were able to survive in arid environments (their kidneys harvest water from their prey) and created a highly efficient way to survive in an environment of limited resources.
The major metabolic differences are:
- Cats require high quality protein to be healthy.
- Cats require a supply of taurine in their diet.
Let’s cross reference this with a vegan diet.
Image: mararie via Flickr
What is a Vegan Diet?
A vegan diet is vegetarianism taken to the next level by excluding any animal-derived ingredients, such as eggs, milk, and dairy products.
All bodies need protein to function, and since meat is off the menu vegans get their protein from grains, pulses, beans, and legumes. These plant-derived proteins are technically known as being of ‘low biological value’ when it comes to nourishing the body. The latter is a term used by nutritionists to describe how useful a food is. The lower the biological value, the less likely it is to be a good source of nutrition.
Low biological value with regards to plant proteins means they don’t contain all the ‘amino acids’ necessary for tissue growth. But the good news for us humans is our bodies found a way round this deficiency. As omnivores, our bodies have learnt to use plant-based proteins as building blocks with which to manufacture those missing amino acids. Thus, although pulses don’t contain taurine, we dodge the issue by manufacturing our own from the raw building blocks in the protein.
Amino acids and proteins are vital for body functions such as tissue growth, repair and healing, making haemoglobin, myoglobin, and as part of the vital immunoglobulins that make up our immune system. So switching back to cats, they need protein of ‘high biological value’ such as meat, with all the amino acids ready supplied. If they don’t get everything they need, there is no compromise; they become taurine deficient and extremely ill.
Image: Konstantin Merenkov via Flickr
Taurine Deficiency in Cats
If you feed your cat a vegan diet there is no doubt that they will become taurine deficient. Taurine is needed for:
- Platelet function (deficiency leads to impaired blood clotting)
- Growing healthy bones (deficiency leads to skeletal deformities in kittens)
- Hair growth
- Healthy heart muscle (deficiency causes dilated cardiomyopathy or DCM)
- Healthy eyesight (deficiency leads to retinal disorders and blindness)
Of these, the most serious are dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) and blindness.
It was as late as 1987 that the link between a lack of taurine and DCM was first made. For decades it had been recognised that cats on a vegetarian diet fared badly, of which a classic sign was early death from heart failure. This was also around the time when cardiac ultrasound scans were in their infancy, and vegetarian cats supplied a steady source of cases to veterinarians to study.
But it was UC Davis, Veterinary teaching hospital that realised all the cats they were studying with heart failure were also testing taurine deficient. Then, to their surprise when the cats were given taurine-supplements for 2 – 3 months, their heart function started to improve. The response was so marked that they named this new condition ‘taurine deficiency induced myocardial failure’, but this being a bit of a mouthful to say, the shorter name DCM (which describes the appearance of the heart) took off.
Image: Rainer Stropek via Flickr
Long story short, if you genuinely want the best for your cat, then please respect their need to eat meat. If you are tempted to get round the problem by supplementing a vegan diet with taurine, remember the latter is only part of the picture. The proteins are still of low biological value which means your cat is liable to have a poor coat, weak immune system, and be at risk of problems with their circulation and blood clotting.
Embrace the cat as a carnivore and know you are doing the humane thing by feeding them the diet that nature intended.
This blog post is part of the quarterly campaign for Be the Change for Animals – advocating to make the world a better place for all animals.
Firstly, I don’t believe in forcing my ethical beliefs into others – especially pets who have no choice in the matter.
However, I would ask if synthetic proteins can provide adequate nutrition for cats?
From the articles I’ve read the consensus is that they can live a healthy sustainable lifestyle for up to 8-9 years at least on these synthetic foods like the Australian pet food brand Vegan Pet. However the long term studies are still out for the time being as no research has been done.
Obviously some pet owners are dumb and dangerously feed their pets tofu and vegetables. But if there were a palatable, nutritious and digestible meat alternative would you consider it?
Great article, I’ve been telling people the same thing about rats. You really wouldn’t believe the amount of people who insist on giving their rats a ‘healthy’ vegan diet. The issue is that, well, as you know rats are omnivores.
Cats being carnivores and all it just seems utterly mad to me that anyone would do it, but yeah as I say I guess I’m not surprised!
Cats are definitely meat eaters for sure! They need that protein. Great info here, thanks.
What an awesome post on something I have always wondered about! I have vegan acquaintances that I know from rabbit rescue whom I know feed their cats vegan diets – this post makes me really sad for them.
My mother has cats and never fed them vegan diet! So important to raise awareness
There is no way my girls would accept a Vegan diet…. which is just as well from what you’re telling us! Thanks for the insight. Love the new look of your blog btw, been meaning to say!
Annette
Super important topic. With veganism being the latest health craze among humans, we’d seen a shift to people wanting to feed vegan diets to their cats. There are so many health problems that arise from such a switch, and if you’re going to own a cat and treat it well, they can’t conform to your standards.
I love this post. I am vegetarian and would never make my carnivore pets vegetarian. I feel like it defeats the entire purpose of caring for animals if you don’t feed them a proper diet. If you don’t want to have buy and handle meat for your pets, then get a pet that doesn’t naturally eat meat like a rabbit or horse.
This is such an important topic to share with cat owners.
This is a very informative article, great job.
All of my cats eat meat, wouldn’t have it any other way. & Mr S will try to eat our meat if he has the chance to sneak it off our plate, haha ?
This is a great post! I think so many people are trying to change the diets of our pets to fit their lifestyle or need. Our pets need meat in their diets period!
The thought of someone making a cat to be vegan makes my stomach churn. Dogs, too, for that matter. I saw a vegetarian dog food in a store recently (though, I guess there could still be dairy/egg in it), and it gave me GREAT pause. Dogs don’t need taurine like cats, though. I hope your post helps someone who’s thinking about this and googles it!
Yeah… I don’t believe in feeding cats or dogs vegan diets! They’re not meant to eat that way… plus I’m pretty sure Mr. N would starve himself before going vegan.
We’ve been looking into raw diets a lot on the blog too. It’s amazing the difference giving your pet a natural diet can make. Interesting to see that is also makes an impact on cat’s too.
Great information, and very important to remember that the choices humans make for themselves must also be balanced for the pet with what’s physiologically ideal for the species.
In the past year the humans in the house have opted for a diet with less meat and we get our proteins from other sources. But saying that, I believe when it comes to our pets nutrition we must be very careful and understand their needs completely before making changes. Great post, thank you.
Wow, what a great article. I learned so much! We are a dog household and don’t have cats at the moment but I found this information really interesting and shared it. Thank you!
Even though I am vegetarian, I would never think to make my cat eat only veggies. Cats are meant to have meat! Great post and lots of good info!
Thank you for this great and informative article! Just Pinned this on my Mews News board!
Such a great post! My cat, Skeeter, is shocked! I’ve never understood why anyone would try to make their cat a vegetarian and you’ve explained the health reasons why not to so well. Thanks for blogging the change for animals.
Sue
Be the Change for Animals
Talking-dogs.com
Really important post …I sure hope there aren’t many people who are trying to feed their cats a vegan diet.
Mum’s a vegan but she will never ever feed me or any cat a vegan diet. She respects the fact that I’m a carnivore and feeding me vegan food will do me no good at all.
WONDERFUL post! It’s such an important topic. Thank you so, so much for writing this. Our cats have been absolutely thriving since switching to a whole food, all protein diet.
Bravo! Bravo! A few weeks ago, I chronicled the life of a neighbors cat who wasn’t fed meat by her human. She had to scrounge the hood for cat food. I’m gonna share this.
I always wondered what made people think vegetarian/vegan diets were okay for cats. This is good information for anyone considering it.
Thank you for joining is for Blog The Change For Animals!
My peeps are veggies. Not vegans but definitely vegetarian. But us cats? Our cats are carnivores, for sure. No veggie diets for us. Peeps know that whereas being veggie might be quite good for them, it’s NOT OKAY for kitties, at all. Not okay, not safe and totally unacceptable, for sure. MOUSES!
Thank you for this! I’m just galled anyone would endanger their cat’s health by foolishly feeding them a vegan diet.
Here here! Along with this, a lot of commercial cat foods that aren’t veg or vegan are still very high in carbohydrates and are not good choices for cats.
Hey guys! Sorry we haven’t been around – life is busy. This is a great post with a lot of good information. Mommy was a vegetarian, but now she’s a “flexitarian”. She’d never make us eat a plant based diet, that’s for sure. She knows meat is important for us.