Cats, cats, cats... I LOVE them. I love dogs too, but dogs are more adaptable to a vegetarian diet than cats and thus, cat ownership puts the vegan in a very sticky spot that most have not really discussed in great depth. For every bit of anecdotal evidence that a cat can thrive on a supplemented vegetarian diet, there is a horror story of a cat becoming severely ill, and suffering a painful death. Cats are carnivores. They kill animals not out of choice, and not cruelly (this requires an awareness cats do not possess), but because, unlike us, they absolutely must for survival. But domestic cats rely on us. Most, excepting maybe those who live on farms, can't hunt enough of their natural prey to sustain themselves.
It is impossible, here, to be dogmatic about vegan philosophy. The only possible solution to feeding other animals to domesticated cats is to euthanize most if not all of them. And obviously, I am against choosing to kill animals--for food or any other reason. Oh, the quandary. Technically, the way dogs and cats are euthanized is at least more 'humane' than the way turkeys and chickens are slaughtered. So if I were to outright choose the lesser of two evils in terms of pain and suffering, I'd have to admit that euthanizing house pets would be the way to go.
But. Not only am I very selfish in my reliance on my cats--they lower my stress, help my anxiety, help me sleep, and my relationship with them is as true as my relationship with any other friend--but I have to stop and wonder: if we did away with all domesticated and farm animals (note I say 'farm' not 'FARMED'), how would we form the kinds of relationships with animals that give us our compassion for them in the first place?
In his book EATING ANIMALS, Jonathan Safran Foer makes a powerful connection between owning and loving a dog (or cat) and eating other animals. Historically, and in many countries still, people eat and have eaten dogs. In the USA, we are disgusted by that idea. We were outraged at the cruelty to dogs inflicted by Michael Vick when his dog fighting scandal made newspaper headlines in 2007. Certainly many were outraged while reading the morning news over bacon and eggs for breakfast; the pig that bacon came from likely treated just as cruelly--and sharing many mental, emotional and social traits with dogs.
Once we stop soothing that cognitive dissonance with flimsy, emotion-based justifications, we understand that eating a pig is just as morally reprehensible as eating a dog or a cat, animals that we count as beloved friends and family members.
Without that point of reference, how would humans find compassion for animals at all? I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's a real question and concern I have.
I'm not going to deny that humans are natural meat eaters. I'm not going to deny the myriad pitfalls and challenges of transitioning from to a balanced, healthy, well supplemented plant based diet. (Many stuck in the western way of eating simply 'go vegan' by cutting animal products and increasing the unhealthy carbs they've always eaten, a sure road to failure.) But the truth, the way I see it, is that the planet is simply no longer able to support a fast-growing, meat eating human population. It's evolve into herbivores or die, basically.
Sure, if we all ate perfectly ideal meat from perfectly ideal farms and slaughterhouses (or hunted our own meat in the wild) at a perfectly ideal (ie. 10x reduced) consumption level, this would help. But it wouldn't change the fact that our population is going nowhere but up, and the planet still can't sustain human carnivism in the long run.
So there is no perfect answer. I'm a hypocrite just like everybody else. I firmly believe that killing animals for food is morally wrong, but I buy their flesh nonetheless, processed into pellets to sustain the lives of my beloved cats. I don't know what to do about that at the moment, but denying it certainly doesn't help.
I hope that by spreading a message of facing the truth about our planet, our bodies, and what we eat head-on, that I am at least part of a larger movement for a more compassionate human species.
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