Re: veggie cats

[bloch%mandrill@ucsd.edu (Steve Bloch)]

IED0DXM%OAC.UCLA.EDU@mitvma.mit.edu quotes from the New York Times:
        Q.: Could a healthy vegetarian diet be devised for cats?
   
        A.: "Definitely not," said Prof. James Morris of the Department
   of Physiological Science at the School of Veterinary Medicine of the
   University of California at Davis.
        A vegetable-based diet could be devised, he said, but only if
   some chemical reagents and animal fats were added to it. That is
   because cats cannot synthesize some of the essential fatty acids
   found in animal fat.
        "For example, plants have virtually none of an amino acid called
   taurine," he said. "Taurine deficiency results in blindness and loss of
   hearing, dilated cardiomyopathy, grave retardation in kittens and the
   birth of kittens with developmental abnormalities."

Among my many vegetarian friends is at least one who feeds his two
dogs on a strict vegetarian diet, with apparently no ill effects.  I
don't know what my friend Cris, who is not only strict vegetarian but
a regional PETA representative, feeds her cats, but since dogs and
cats are both domesticated forms of top-of-the-food-chain carnivores,
I wouldn't expect much difference in their nutritional needs.

"The above opinions are my own.  But that's just my opinion."
Stephen Bloch