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Vegetarian cats

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al...@cit-vax.uucp

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Aug 25, 1986, 2:21:40 PM8/25/86
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What I've always heard (I'm not saying this is absolutely the truth, but it
makes a lot of sense to me) is that cats, like other carnivores, have much
shorter intestines than herbivores or even omnivores, and, because of this,
cannot digest vegetable matter, which takes more time (=intestine length)
to break down and digest. Must be those pesky cell walls. The conclusion
is then that feeding more than small amounts of vegetable matter to cats is
a bad thing to do ... small amounts are probably OK, even if they can't
digest them properly; after all, cats eat some grass now and again.

Does anyone have the pure untarnished gospel truth on this matter? It seems
to me as though attempts to make kitty go veggie are just idealistic and
unreasonable exercises. One can argue about humans (sort of, accepted truth
seems to be that we're by ancestry omnivorous), but cats are definite
carnivores and always have been.

And how do you stop cats from hunting mice, gophers, et al?
--
--Peter Alfke
"Pick up Fractals on the Feral Rocks" al...@csvax.caltech.edu

adri...@datacube.uucp

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Aug 29, 1986, 11:01:00 AM8/29/86
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It is true that cats, and other meat-hunting-eating animals
have much shorter intestines than herbivorous creatures, and they
also have sharper teeth(fangs). The short intestines probably help
move the meat through the animal's digestive tract fairly quickly,
so putrefraction of the meat is not a danger.We humans, however,
have long intestines, which means the meat stays in our systems longer
and may become putrefied and possibly toxic, causing perhaps toxin
overload with symptoms like bad breath, skin problems, etc.We also
don't have real fangs!So, it would seem that cats are genetically
designed for consuming meat, and we are not!


-Adrienne@Datacube

J. Peter Alfke

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Sep 2, 1986, 8:11:19 PM9/2/86
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From what I've heard, the problem is not that our intestines are too long
for meat, but that carnivores' are too short for vegetable matter.

I've always had trouble with people's claims that humans are not designed
for eating meat; we and our ancestors all the way back to whatever pre-
primates we evolved from, have always eaten meat whenever it was available.
So why is it still bad for us?

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