The cat who refuses to eat meat
by Carl Wieland
Published: 28 April 2009(GMT+10)
Photo stock.xchng
For a cat to refuse all meat and fish in favour of only vegetables is unheard of.
To see a picture of Dante eating his vegetables, click
here
Living as we do in a cursed, post-Fall world, it’s
hard to imagine a cat that would refuse to eat meat—and whose palate cannot
even be tempted by fish.
Some previous articles of ours (see below) have
covered such things as lions brought up on non-meat diets like pasta, cheese and
eggs—which highlights that even today, some animals that are believed to be
“obligate carnivores” do not actually need to eat meat after all. But
Britain’s “veggie cat” seems truly unique.
Called “Dante”, the black and white feline was found by Miss Becky Page,
abandoned and starving, as a fluffy kitten. A tasty bowl of chicken was rejected.
Dante also turned his nose up at a serve of fish. But when he spied some leftover
vegetables, the starving youngster hungrily devoured them.
Now two years old, Dante has resolutely stuck to his vegetarian diet ever since,
despite many offers of even the finest canned cat food. His owner grows most of
the organic delights he savours—both fruits and vegetables. His favourites
include brussels sprouts and asparagus, melon and rhubarb, and he “has been
known to raid the fruit bowl for bananas”.1
Miss Page insists that Dante does not supplement his diet with wild prey. Not only
has she never seen him stalking anything living (only bits of string) but, she says,
he hates to even go outside. Also, Page keeps “three chickens, a rabbit, two
guinea pigs, a rat, a hamster and fish at her home”, but Dante is not even
remotely interested in adding them to his menu.
We see once more that even in this fallen world, something we have come to see as
‘normal’ is not ‘inevitable’.
Veterinary experts advise that cats (unlike humans, or even dogs) absolutely cannot
get certain nutrients from any source other than meat. Even vegetarian cat foods
contain synthetic versions of these vital ingredients. So Dante’s owner tries
to smuggle the occasional scrap of meat into his food. When he spies this, though,
Dante studiously leaves the meat behind.
The nutrients concerned are arachidonic acid,2
which cats need for wound healing3
—and also taurine,4
without which the retina is supposed to deteriorate gradually so that the animal
goes blind, and also suffer heart problems.5
But Dante is as healthy as ever. Whether that is the result of Becky’s efforts
to get the odd scrap past the gatekeeper or not, vets appear to be uniformly puzzled
about Dante’s situation.6
Which tempts one to speculate about the origin of meat-eating in the cat kind (see
the Creation Answers Book,
chapter 6, “How
did bad things comeabout?”) Perhaps loss mutation was somehow involved,
with cats now no longer having the ability to synthesize some of the ingredients
they now need to obtain from meat?
Could Dante be an example of a “reverse mutation”, restoring the ability
to synthesize the necessary ingredients? If so, this may have caused him to also
lose the “drive” to obtain those ingredients via meat, something which
is otherwise “normal” for all cats, regardless of size. Of course, this
is speculation in the absence of more information, but speculation based on known
examples in nature (see for example At last, a good mutation?).
But at least we see once more that even in this fallen world, something we have
come to see as “normal” is not “inevitable”. And speaking
of “normal” it was fascinating to see that at the foot of the UK Daily
Mail web article from which most of this information was gleaned, there
was a comment from a Russian reader, Elena, saying:
“That’s how it should be!
It’s natural for all the living beings not to eat each other.”
[Animals eating each other] is also likely not the way it will be (Isaiah
11, 65)
Well, Elena, we agree that “That’s how it should be”—or
rather, that’s how it was meant to be—originally, before Adam’s
sin messed things up. Back in Eden, it really would have been “natural for
all the living beings not to eat each other.” It’s because we’ve
become so accustomed to living in a post-Fall world that we tend to see rare examples
like Dante as decidedly “unnatural”. It is also likely not
the way it will be (Isaiah 11, 65)—see also The carnivorous
nature and suffering of animals.
It’s interesting though that when there are such rare, occasional “glimpses
of Eden”, even unbelievers would find it generally “good” for
Dante to be cozying up to his carrots than to be tormenting some hapless mouse prior
to tearing it apart for lunch. This, for Christians, is very much relevant to the
whole issue of the age of the earth. If the fossil record
really was laid down over millions of years, rather than being largely related to
the global Flood of Genesis, that means that most of
the fossils predate man. But the fossils show evidence of not just death and diseases
including gout7 and
cancer, broken bones and infections, they show
evidence of things eating each other (including coprolites with
remains of animals killed for food).
Which means that all those things we naturally see as “bad” must have
been part of the world that God calls “very good”, and the whole idea
that the Fall can explain the “bad things” in nature is gone. God must
like death, suffering and carnivory! We can see once more the mess one gets into
by trying to harmonize man-made ideas like “millions of years” with
the obvious, straightforward outline of world history God gives us in Genesis.
A reader’comment:
Kevin M., Australia, 5 May 2009
I well remember visiting friends in the highlands of Irian Jaya (Indonesia) in the
middle 1980s. They had a cat there which had never eaten meat, because meat was
very hard to get. Instead it had lived for years on boiled rice and vegies.
In all respects it appeared to be quite healthy, except for the fact that it didn't
have so much as one tooth left in its mouth. It seems that lack of chewing on its
food had led to the gradual loss of its teeth, until none were left. Naturally it
was now completely dependent on its owners to provide food, which they were happy
to do as it was a very friendly and companionable animal.
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Related articles
Further reading
References
-
Meet Dante: Britain’s first vegetarian cat who refuses to eat meat or fish,
MailOnline, 14 April 2009 Return to text.
- Arachidonic acid = all-cis-5,8,11,14-eicosatetraenoic
acid, C19H31COOH, an omega-6 fatty acid. Return
to text.
- “Arachidonic acid is necessary to produce an inflammatory
response. In many cases, such as in allergies, the goal is to suppress the inflammatory
response. But in other cases, the response is a necessary means by which the body
can protect itself. Arachidonic acid also helps to regulate skin growth, is necessary
for proper blood clotting, and is necessary for the reproductive and gastrointestinal
systems to function properly.”
Feline Nutritional & Special Health Issues FAQs. Return to
text.
- Taurine (after Latin taurus, bull/ox, where it was
first found) = 2-aminoethanesulfonic acid NH2C2H4SO3H.
Return to text.
- “Taurine deficiency causes feline central retinal degeneration
(FCRD), eventually leading to irreversible blindness, dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM)
& reduced fertility in female cats.”
Taurine and Cats, Catworld. Return to text.
- Note that even the non-meat-eating lions discussed in our
previous articles may have been able to get these from e.g. eggs and cheese (egg
yolk contains arachadonic acid, and milk contains some taurine). But Dante appears
to prefer a totally vegan (i.e. no eggs or cheese, even) diet. Return
to text.
- B.M. Rothschild, D. Tanke and Ken Carpenter, Tyrannosaurs
suffered from gout, Nature 387(6631):357, 22 May 1997.
Return to text.
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