Can You Make a Cat Vegetarian: How Do Pets Feel About a Plant-Based Diet?
More and more people are becoming vegetarians, giving up food of animal origin.
Some of them try to impose their own beliefs on their pets, but this is definitely not worth doing, and here’s why.
Why Vegetarianism Is Not For Cats
No cat will be happy with a plant-based diet, and this is because no member of the cat "race" is capable of producing certain proteins on its own, including taurine.
Its source for animals is food - mainly beef, chicken and fish.
If a cat is deficient in taurine, it is at increased risk of developing a potentially fatal condition called dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM).
In cats with DCM, the heart muscle becomes weaker, which negatively affects the body's oxygen supply.
But this is not the only reason "against" vegetarianism. Veterinarians note that cats digest carbohydrates poorly, so cats may have difficulty absorbing nutrients from plant foods.
