Cats can absolutely live on a vegan diet. Cats, like all animals, need specific nutrients rather than specific ingredients Source. The source you provided pointed out 3 specific nutrients to be concerned about, so let’s go through them.
Taurine is the first, and most obvious nutrient to focus on. I’m the natural environment, it is only available in animal sources. Thankfully, we do not live in the natural works, and we have developed ways to synthesise taurine. This is very important because the processing on commercial cat foods remove taurine from the meat they use Source. We can use this synthetic taurine to make cat food that doesn’t need to harm other animals to make.
Next up is protein. Cats have a short digestive system that is specialised for digesting protein and fat. Thankfully, we humans also need protein, so we have figured or some very good ways to extract protein from various sources and concentrate it. The dry cat food I use is 32% protein, and is sourced from fungus. It has the same amino acid profile as chicken. I have seen meat based dry food with more protein, but from my research 32% is pretty decent. I have seen some meat based cat food with less.
Then, carbohydrates. They are not good for cats in general. As far as I’ve seen with commercial cat food, the cheap stuff is full of filler carbs and the more expensive stuff had higher protein and fat content. This trend follows for vegan cat foods, so be sure to check the label.
Like I said before, there are commercially available vegan cat foods that are suitable to feeding your cat. There is also vegan cat foods that is no good, so it’s important to do the research to make sure you get something good. I think we can agree that homemade vegan diets for cats are an extremely bad idea for the reasons mentioned in the article you mentioned. Cat nutrition is too complicated to be trying to make at home.
If there is some other factor I haven’t considered please let me know. I’m just trying to do what I can for my cat and morals.
Posting the same link to the ASPCA isn’t as compelling as you think it is. They don’t touch on synthetic taurine at all, even though it’s used in most commercial pet foods. Did they just forget?
I completely agree that a whole food vegan diet is terrible for cats, which is why cat foods are supplimented with the necessary nutrients. Your Blue Cross link agrees with me, where they say:
These needs cannot be met by a vegan diet without synthetic supplements.
These synthetic suppliments are the while reason vegan cat food is possible. I’m not sure why the ASPCA is just ignoring the existence of synthetic taurine. Is there some issue with synthetic taurine that only the ASPCA knows about?
The issues brought up in all the articles boil down to unprocessed plants having low levels of necessary nutrients, but the plants are processed to extract these nutrients to bring them to acceptable levels.
There are definitely issues with vegan cat foods, but to put a blanket statement that they are not possible requires a bit better evidence than one group saying so, without acknowledging the key ingredient that makes vegan cat foods feasible.
I’m not all that interested in arguing beyond this point either. Your appeals to authority are unconvincing when the authority disagrees with you, or when they neglect to mention the primary counterpoint to their argument.
