Ask the Appeal: How Do Vegans Justify Keeping Carnivorous Pets (AKA, Cats)?

So
a question has been bedeviling me for a couple of weeks, but since I
don’t want to alienate or offend my veggie friends, I figured you might
be able to get some answers on my behalf.  The question:  How do
herbivorous humans concerned about animal cruelty and industrial farm
practices justify keeping carnivorous pets (erm, “companion animals”)
like cats?  After all, even a “premium” brand like Iams is owned by an
evil multinational (Proctor and Gamble) that grinds up waste from meat
processing plants.  And if you’re more of an environmentalist veg than
an animal rights or anti-corporate veg, apparently a housecat’s carbon
footprint is larger than that of a small car.  Are people forcing their
cats to go vegan?  Are they spending massive amounts of money on
humanely raised, locally sourced pet food?  Or are they judging me for
eating a beef tongue taco while Fluffy dines on Fancy Feast?

Signed,

Rabbits Are Cute, Lovable and Delicious

Steve Simitzis, a self proclaimed “cat loving vegan” from vegansaurus, sent me a great email with his thoughts on this topic.

For you TL;DR folks: Steve says the best, “least harm” approach for vegan cat
owners is to spay and neuter cats, keep cats indoors, choose cat food
brands that kill the least number of new animals, and take care of the
cat population while working to reduce it in a humane manner. Or, get a
dog/rabbit/veggie loving pet.

See below for Steve’s full response (definitely worth reading!):

I’ll
be perfectly straight on this – living with cats as a vegan is complex.
Unlike animals like dogs or rabbits, cats are not omnivores. Dogs are
quite comfy on a vegetarian diet, and if you live with a rabbit, well,
they eat rabbit food. Cats are wired differently inside and need meat,
or at least, they need everything that meat provides. There’s not much
disagreement on this, and vegans have had very mixed luck with
switching their cats to a vegan diet. Some cats seem to do okay, while
others develop serious health problems or even die. We don’t really
know enough about it, nor is there much of a track record of clinical
trials to learn from. Think about how confused we are about human
nutritional science. Well we know even less about animal nutrition
beyond the basics. Heart and kidney problems are common, and even vegan
cat food vendors recommend that you frequently check the pH of your
cat’s urine. Yeesh.

If your goal is to decrease the amount of animal suffering in the
world, spay and neuter programs are the most humane and effective way
to reduce the cat population, which has the important side effect of
reducing the number of animals eaten by cats. It’s also important, as a
cat owner, to keep your cats indoors so they don’t hunt and kill native
wildlife.

So that helps reduce, but not eliminate, harm. This is where
researching the food you buy becomes important. Cat food based on meat
parts that humans won’t use and would otherwise discard is a better
choice. And this doesn’t limit you to horrible brands like Iams (which
are the furthest thing from “premium”). There are plenty of high
quality brands from smaller companies that you might buy at somewhere
like Rainbow that are (a) affordable and (b) aren’t necessarily killing
new animals for your Fluffy. (And I’m punting here because I have a
bunch of research to do that involves due diligence on cat food brands
– stay tuned for results.) I feed my cat on less than a dollar a day
with decent quality food that doesn’t come from a big evil corporation.

Short of rounding up all cats and gassing them (a blatantly
horrific and cruel option), this is probably the best you’re going to
get. I could choose to not own a cat, but then someone else would have
adopted my cat in my place. Net animals saved? Zero. Or I could have
intentionally adopted the cat then sent her to a kill-shelter, which
would be a cruel option. Or I could experiment with a vegan diet on my
cat, and possibly harm or kill her in the process. This option also
creates animal suffering.
As for the carbon footprint of pets being greater than that of cars, that’s been debunked. 

An eight pound cat that eats a fraction of a can of cat food per
day does not emit more greenhouse gas than a car. To be on the safe
side, don’t buy beef!

Another twist? Within the next few years,
lab grown meat is going to hit the market. When that happens, we’ll see
it first in food products where people are least likely to care. That
means McDonalds hamburgers and pet food. At that point we have no
problem. The meat will be made of cloned tissue that never came from a
living animal of any kind.