The Problem with Vegan Cats
8 Sep 2024
With more and more people choosing a plant-based diet, some are extending this to their cats as well. Just as they want to reduce the impact of their diet to the environment, farmed animals, and (to a lesser extent) their health, these motivations get them to feed their cats without any meat, i.e. vegan. As a vegan myself I completely agree with these goals. E.g. pet food is responsible for about 5% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the US [1]. Most of that comes from using meat as an ingredient. On top of that, animals are exploited and killed, all in order to get their meat.
Still, I do see a problem with getting a cat and feeding them vegan cat food.
Obligate Carnivores
Before we get to that, I know what many of you are already screaming in your mind, so let’s address the fact that cats are indeed “obligate carnivores”. While this seems to be a very easy to understand term, there is nuance in its meaning that is easily missed. Obligate carnivores have been observed to require eating meat in the wild. They have to eat meat because they require certain nutrients that are not found in plants. Without them, they will die.
So far, so good, for obligate carnivores in the wild. And here is the nuance, in domestic settings, with the use of modern food processing techniques, all the nutrients an obligate carnivore needs can be created and added without needing any meat or other animal products. This may sound crazy, but this has been done for decades with taurine in traditional, meat-based, cat food. The way a lot of cat food was made, deactivates a lot of the taurine from the meat ingredients, which caused a lot of issues. Adding synthetic taurine after this processing solved these issues [2]. In other words, a cat in the wild will never be vegan. When talking about vegan cats though, we are really talking about domesticated ones, where there is an exception to this obligation.
Natural Diet
It is also true that vegan cat food isn’t part of the natural diet of cats. Then again, that isn’t the case for traditional cat food either. Have you ever imagined a cat hunt a cow, a lamb, or a tuna? Even chickens are larger than what a wild cat (or the typical outdoor cat) would prey on. Rabbits, rodents, and small birds are mainly on their plate [3]. Those are consumed whole when still warm, not as pre-cut refrigerated fillets.
Traditional cat food also dispels the notion that cats cannot digest plant matter. Next time you’re in the supermarket, pick up a few tins of cat food. You’ll see them full of processed plant matter. These are added as cost effective ways to increase the nutrient content of the food, they would simply be left out if they didn’t work as that would be even cheaper.
And even though traditional cat food isn’t that natural, cats still like it. The same is true for vegan cat food. A study asked over a thousand cat guardians to report specific behaviours of their cat while they’re eating showed that cats like vegan food too. In the details they did find that vegan cats licked their food less than those on a traditional diet. Yet that finding is more than offset by cats leaving more of their traditional food on average than both vegan and raw meat foods [4].
Health
It might seem obvious that a cat’s health would deteriorate without meat. Surprisingly, the research on this points to the contrary here: no major adverse effects have been identified, and cat owners of vegan cats consistently report some benefits [5].
There is a mechanistic suggestion that vegan cat foods increase the risk of high urinary acidity, which in turn can cause dangerous versions of Feline lower urinary tract disease (FLUTD). While there is no evidence that substantiates this suggestion yet [6], there are solutions to this issue already. Monitoring a vegan (or non-vegan) cat’s urinary acidity any issues are caught before they cause issues. Once caught it can be restored by supplementing the diet, e.g. with vitamin C, can resolve the issue [7].
The Problem
In the end, surprising as it may seem, healthy cats actually do pretty well on vegan food. But what is a cat is not healthy? What if as they get older get some issue for which they need prescription food? In principle this could be made without meat, yet in practice there is no single vegan medicinal cat food available in 2024 for a vet to prescribe.
And that is the real problem with getting a vegan cat. You can get them onto a vegan diet, but when they develop some condition from getting older, they might need prescription food. And this prescription food is not yet available without exploiting other animals.
Transitioning your cat to a vegan diet is a great way to reduce your pet's environmental impact, and to avoid having to kill countless other "food animals" for them. All I ask is that you consider things could change, and consider this before getting a cat. If you do get the recommendation to buy medicinal food with animal products down the line, you might justify it as “necessary”. But it’ll still suck nonetheless...