Cats (which are what all this nonsense is about) are obligated carnivores, so they’d either find meat elsewhere (and probably move to another home were they weren’t mistreated, if able) or die.
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iso@lemy.lol 4 weeks agoI wonder if we feed our animals with “vegan food” for a year, would they start to choose that instead of meat or meat based food?
leftzero@lemmynsfw.com 4 weeks ago
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Man, I’ve had cats off and on my whole life.
You can offer kittens freshly weaned anything you want, and they’ll go after the stuff that smells right.
You can feed a cat any brand of food, and if they catch a bug or a rodent, or a bird, they may well eat it, or leave it on your pillow as a gift. Kinda rolling the dice which one tbh.
Cats are predators driven by instincts. A kitten rescued after being separated from its mother, raised by hand and then runs across something that sets off the prey drive will try to catch it. Adult cats that aren’t even hungry will engage in hunting behaviors because it just flips the right switches in their brain.
Animals? They have almost zero choice in their food. When they do have a choice, they’ll eat what smells right, and/or acts like food. You can’t train koalas to eat meat as their main diet, and you can’t train cats to not eat meat. At best, as an animal guardian, you provide them with limited choices, and they eat or starve (if the food isn’t close enough to being food for their instincts, they won’t even try to eat it).
Frankly, anyone taking a predator as a pet and not being willing to fulfill its basic needs is dumb. They’re choosing their wishes over the care of the animal, just to fulfill whatever belief it is they’re following.
You don’t want the animals in your care to not eat meat, don’t get animals that eat meat at all. No dogs, no cats, no snakes, nothing like that. Go adopt a bird that people didn’t know how to take care of and dumped at some rescue. Pick the animal companions that fit your life choices, don’t try and shoehorn yours into their existence.
In other words, vegans keeping meat eating pets are hypocrites because they’re exploiting animals for their own preferences and needs instead of the animals’