Oh my God, my cat is a vegetarian!
Jun 29 '00
I've got 10 cats, so they cover every spectrum of the feline personality, but I never expected to have a cat steal broccoli from my plate. Irvine, a 1 year old male, has the strangest tastes I've ever come across in a feline.
Our family has a pretty relaxed way of eating, all of us gathered around in the living room half the time for dinner. Most of the time we have to watch out for opportunistic chicken nugget thieves when the cats wander through. Irvine, however, is different. Chicken, steak, hamburgers, and hot dogs all get ignored when he's around. The danger is to such items as carrots, brussels sprouts, peas, and green beans.
Irvine's addiction is insatiable. While we've managed to train the other cats to wait for scraps with a combination of firm voices and the occasional resort to the water pistol, Irvine will risk anything for a spinach leaf. My children don't seem particularly upset over him snagging a slice of beet and making off with it, but we still try to maintain the same standards of pet dinnertime manners even with Irvine's strange preferences.
It started when he was a kitten. His first solid food was a dropped pea. I expected a curious sniff, perhaps a mouthing before it was spit out again, but Irvine devoured it. Odd, but I figured it might be a kitten thing. Besides, peas aren't too unmeaty tasting.
Next I noticed him climbing into the turtle tank to satisfy his cravings by snacking on shredded potatoes and carrots. Now, our turtles are clean of salmonella infection, but it's still not a good idea to let the cats hang out with them. We got a lid for the tank and assumed he'd actually been hunting for hidden meal worms or something.
By the time he was 4 months old, Irvine started snatching off of plates. At first he'd steal cauliflower and carrots. I still persisted in denial, thinking perhaps butter attracted him, or there were meat juices soaked into the veggies and he just hadn't figured out to try for the meat itself. No dice. When I actually offered him a bite of meat, he ignored it completely and used the distraction to swipe a green bean from the plate. Now I was beginning to get suspicious that something was really wrong with this cat.
A call to the vet got a response of a moment's silence. "Your cat won't even touch the meat?" Nope. He barely tolerates lamb and rice cat food. Probably only for the rice. The vet asked me to verify Irvine's health. He's perfectly healthy, good weight, active, nice coat, clean teeth, normal stools, and no excessive gas. "Well," replied the vet, "he's apparently getting his nutrition. I guess you have a vegetarian cat." He advised me to try egg and soy products to make sure Irvine got his protein and to offer him calcium rich vegetables, but otherwise let him carry on with his unique dietary choice.
Interestingly enough, it works. Irvine is quite satisfied with scrambled egg or the occasional treat of vegi-burger (it's high in sodium and expensive, so we give it only once a month or so). Much to our amusement, we've found he has quite a variety of favorites in the green leafy department. When a frozen brussels sprout rolled out of the bag, he jumped on it like a gourmet delicacy and didn't even wait for it to thaw.
We're not big on houseplants (watering is a science I fail at with plants) so there's nothing poisonous, but a small pot of live catnip was quite a popular visitor until he consumed the entire thing in one afternoon. I decided that might get a bit expensive and there was no need to make my vegetarian kitty more of a hippy by getting him high all the time. Dried catnip is more controllable and he loves it just as much. Yes, he eats our lawn all the time, but even his appetite isn't enough to make a dent in the yard, and since he prefers dandelions, it serves as a bit of weed control.
If you ever find yourself with a vegetarian cat, don't panic. If they seem to be healthy, you might as well give in and let them eat what they want. If nothing else, a cat happily chomping on a carrot is a conversation starter.
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Epinions.com ID:
QueenLyssa
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Member: Lyssa Jaraba
Location: Riverside, CA
Reviews written: 64
Trusted by: 19 members
About Me:
It's good to be queen.
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