Why do vegetarians & vegans keep carnivores as pets?

I don’t have an answer but wow! @wildpotato – haven’t seen you in years!

Why not? Not everyone with a pet supports the pet food industry. Recognizing that other animals have completely different dietary and nutritional needs does not go against someone’s ethics if they source their pet’ food with a conscience and sustainably.

And really even most vegans are not able to grow and tend their own food supply, and thus, even in different ways, leads to the death of non-plant creatures.

I’m a lacto-ovo vegetarian, and I have a cat who eats what’s appropriate for her: food with meat in it.

I’m illogical. I’m human.

I don’t care. I get love and companionship from my cat. And hair. Lots and lots of hair everywhere.

Google The far side Tofudebeast for a laugh (SFW)

My sister is vegan and had cats, and I was surprised it wasn’t traumatic for her to feed them animal.

I’ve never asked her about it, but my guess is she was ok with it since cats naturally are carnivores, but humans can sustain their lives as vegans.

My guess is animals aren’t killed for pet food, but rather its scraps left from killing animals for human consumption. I think that’s how she wears leather shoes once in a blue moon, but she mostly doesn’t wear leather shoes or purses.

Somebody in the house has to eat the meat!

I think anyone who bases lifestyle choices on any supposedly strict ethical standards will inevitably fail in some way and be exposed to accusations of hypocrisy and moral inconsistency.

There are vegan pet food options though.

I’d say it’s still better for someone to not eat meat and have a meat eating pet, than to also eat meat and have a meat eating pet.

You can’t expect animals to eat the same things as you do.

Have you ever heard of vegans who force their dogs and cats to eat a vegan diet?

@janbb Hi, good to see you too

@canidmajor, @kritiper, @Mimishu1995 Well, of course other animals have different dietary needs. That’s part of my point, that some of the pets we keep are carnivores.

@canidmajor Well, then why would it not also not violate these peoples’ ethics to source & eat meat themselves with conscience & sustainability, if they are already making this choice in the course of owning meat-eating animals? Buying meat is buying meat, and thus supporting the meat industry, regardless of who in the household eats it.

100% agreed that vegan food is grown using animal inputs, though.

@JLeslie Humans can live by consuming all vegetable products, agreed – but those things are grown using animal inputs (manure, feather meal, fish meal, etc) – so whether a human could sustain their life without using animal products seems very debatable, ultimately. And animals are absolutely killed specifically for pet food – check out the horse kill pen rescue groups on FB; lots don’t “make bail.” And I know many farmers & small homesteaders who raise rabbits specifically to feed their dogs. It’s also very common for reptile & large fish hobbyists to breed their own mice and goldfish.

@Kropotkin Why is that better?

@wildpotato I’m not sure what you mean. I said that some vegans force their animals to go vegan regardless of the animals’ dietary need. They are making them eating vegetables too.

@wildpotato The ecological impact is smaller.

@Mimishu1995 Sure, but that small sliver of insane people have very little to do with the question I asked. Okay, let’s set dogs (non-obligate carnivores) aside for the purposes of eliminating this red herring from the debate. Consider, then, cats (obligate carnivores; will have heart problems without consuming meat), snakes, and fish. Better?

@Kropotkin Highly debatable. Growing vegetables non-regeneratively (in large monocrops, fertilized with chemicals, without animal inputs), which provides much of the food that vegans & vegetarians eat, does enormous harm to the environment. Meat & vegetables produced with regenerative agriculture are both more sustainable than either without.

@wildpotato Unless you address this to the vegans and vegetarians who believe that every single creature should eat a vegan diet (which is not true of_any_ I have spoken on this topic with) then assuming that the animals should follow the same ethical guidelines doesn’t apply here.

Feeding the carnivorous pets would require a great deal more effort, as I mentioned.

Animals (pets) don’t have a choice in their eating habits or in their evolutionary biology. They also lack the ethical and empathetic thought processes like we do. Besides people like cats and dogs, they can be very good companions, buddy’s heck even a furry family member. They do possess their own personality’s and get to know their owners.

@wildpotato I was just talking about my sister’s cats not reptiles. You might be right that the animals are killed just for the pet food, I really don’t know.

Using manure doesn’t hurt the animals. Unless, they are breading animals and keeping them in bad conditions solely for manure. Manure is just cleaning up waste.

Milk is different for instance. They keep cows in a state of pregnancy and lactating. Those cows are never allowed to dry up and relax. They are artificially inseminated a lot of the time to get pregnant, that basically rape. Eggs, you are stealing the possibility of their babies.

@wildpotato No. There is absolutely no debate that meat production has a far larger negative impact than crop production. It’s not even close, regenerative or not,

This vegan keeps cats because I love them. I’ve lived with them my whole life. My mental health suffers when I do not have a kitty companion. Cats cannot live without meat, so I provide that for them.

I don’t understand how my personal values about what I consume transfers to what I feed my cat. My cat doesn’t care about the welfare of food animals. Where my values do come into it is what I spend my money on, so… I did research and decided that I can mitigate my conscience buy purchasing cat food that also considers the welfare of animals. I have been feeding my cats Open Farm for several years now. A few new companies have popped up recently.

I don’t feel any guilt about having cats and feeding them meat.