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From: alfke@cit-vax.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.veg
Subject: re: Vegetarian cats
Message-ID: <931@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
Date: Mon, 25-Aug-86 14:21:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: cit-vax.931
Posted: Mon Aug 25 14:21:40 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 28-Aug-86 08:12:59 EDT
Reply-To: alfke@cit-vax.UUCP (J. Peter Alfke)
Organization: California Institute of Technology
Lines: 19

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"		  alfke@csvax.caltech.edu