Hi gloworm*mushroom,

Maybe we just differ in terms of how strong we take the phrase 'cats cannot have diet x' to condemn a given diet.

Would you agree with the following claim?

Cats cannot have a cheap store-bought diet that derives most of its nutrients from plant sources.

If you would then I think we might pretty much agree about diets. If you think appropriately formulated vegan diets are worse for cats than cheap store-bought diets, then I'd like to see your evidence. Do you have something other than the Gray et al (2004) and the general thing about the importance of low carbs and high quality protein? Honestly, I'd like to know if you do.

Again its back to my survive vs thrive.

I believe a cat can probably survive on both a veggie diet and a 'junky' supermarket diet.

I do not think they can thrive on it.

__________________

Hi gloworm*mushroom,

Cool; thanks for clarifying. I think that we both agree about this.

I'm sorry if my footnote in my response to lymorelynn was misleading - to my ear the claim 'cats cannot have diet x' sounded more like 'cats can't survive on x', whereas I guess to you it just sounded more like 'cats can't thrive on diet x'. I think that that was the whole problem, and that we don't really disagree at all on how healthy various kinds of diets are for cats.

I'm very sorry if I got too testy. Thanks for your interest in this. I'm going to be working with a veterinary specialist who consults on home diets, and if you're interested in what I find out I'll post to this thread.

Thanks again!
Howard

I am sorry, but I am sure molluscs feel pain just like a fish.
We are flesh-eating predatory omnivores whether we like it or not. That's how we are made.
If pigs ruled the world, they would eat us. Good for them.
If a mollusc was president, he would serve flash-fried humans as the main course at a state banquet. And his cat would eat human-flavoured Friskies. Good for him.

On the subject of vegan diets I find it intresting that even specialist vegan retail outlets don't recommend cats (especially male cats) be fed an all vegan diet:

VeganCats.com - FAQ

Hi koekemakranka,

So you think might makes right, hunh? Slavery was cool, then, right? Because, you, know, Europeans did at the time rule the relevant parts of the world. Slave owners beat their slaves, sometimes to death, raped them, etc. Good for them, right? And I guess oppressing women was cool then too, right, because men ruled the world. Denying women the vote, not letting them own property, not letting them pursue careers or get away from abusive situations. Good for them, right? And of course if some crazy hippie wants to feed his cat nothing but lentils without even some taurine, so that the cat goes blind and suffers horribly, just because he thought it would be "groovy," well, you know, he had power over the cat, so good for him, right?

And yes, there's evidence that men were *made* to rape women and kill each other and commit infanticide - killer sperm, etc. But you know what? That's completely morally irrelevant. Just because evolution selected for me to be inclined to kill my rivals and do things that result in my having as many offspring as possible doesn't mean that I should go and kill my competitors (even when I can get away with it) or donate as much of my sperm as possible to sperm banks. Evolution doesn't matter to what we actually SHOULD do and avoid as an end in itself. Our welfare (and that of others) DOES.

There's very good evidence that cephalapod molluscs like squid and octupi feel pain (see e.g. Mather "Cephalopod consciousness: Behavioural evidence" 2008). But bivalve molluscs like scallops, clam, and oysters are very different. They're probably the simplest motile animals, with a diffuse nerual net and only a couple ganglia or bunches of nerves. Simpler, I think, than your spinal chord. And we know from studies with individuals whose spinal chords have been severed that you can get that bit of the nervous system to do stuff without them feeling anything.

As to crustacenas like shrimp, which are arthropods (like insects), the case is a bit more complicated. The main pieces of anatomical evidence relevant to them not having phenomenally conscious states is that they don't seem to have anything that plays the role of a forebrain structure that interacts intimately with midbrain structures the way that ours does when we have conscious experiences. (see e.g. Edelman, Baars, and Seth "Identifying hallmarks of consciousness in non-mammalian species" 2005.) The main behavioral evidence relevant to this might be the absence of what Papini (Comparative Psychology, 2008) calls "egocentric learning" that intimately involves an internal state of the organism as in fear conditioning, which is seen in vertebrates (mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, & fish.) Much as spinal patients don't experience injury-down neural events, people under general anesthesia don't seem to experience stimuli when the mid-brain-forebrain structures unique to vertebrates are deactivated, even though their brains continue to record stimuli. There is controversy surrounding this last claim, as there is controversy about exactly what a general anesthetic does. But there really does seem to be a consensus among neuroscientists that midbrain-forebrain activity is essential for conscious experience in us, and arthropods seem to lack analogous structures. It's conceivable that a totally different functional structure plays this role in them, but why think it does so there but not in rocks? You'd at least need some sort of behavioral evidence, which, as I said seems to be lacking (not the difference between this case and that of cephalapod molluscs, which have a very different neural organization than us but which exhibit very complex behavior.)


Hi Ali82,

Yes, that was the thing about urinary tract acidity problems. In fairness to the vegan cats people, they claim that you can feed your cats all vegan without significant problems on this score as long as you're very careful, but that they don't recommend feeding strict vegan diets to because people are not being careful:

"Although we have been giving advice for some time on how these problems can be minimized while still feeding a completely vegan diet, we have found that the vast majority of our customers have not been following this advice....Unless you are very committed to following the advice outlined below, we therefore recommend that you mitigate the risk of urinary tract problems by feeding males cats only a 25-75% vegan diet and females a 50-100% vegan diet."

So holding the fact that they don't recommend the diet to most people is a bit like holding it against raw diets that pro-raw-diet vets don't actually recommend that their clients feed raw because they're worried that their clients won't be careful.

That said, the scientific literature dismisses this whole thing about vegan cats and urinary tract problems as unsubstantiated (see e.g. Wakefield et al 2006). When I contacted the vegan cats manufacturers about systematic evidence concerning urinary tract problems they never responded to me. Oddly enough, I saw similar warnings in the NON-VEGAN home diet information sheets my vet gave me for making home diets with animal proteins like chicken and hamburger in addition to rice (why rice? I don't know; that's what's in the diets that Medi-Cal is recommending). So I really don't know what to make of this urinary tract thing. But given that the vet literature doesn't seem to take it seriously I'm inclined to view it as a rumor, and since I've seen these unsubstantiated warnings about urinary tract problems with both vegan foods and non-vegan home diets I don't in my mind file this as a problem with vegan diets in particular. But in any even I'll definitely ask about this when consulting with a vet specialist on composing our NON-VEGAN home diet.