Customer Reviews

Obligate Carnivore: Cats, Dogs, and What it Really Means to be Vegan

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Finally a book that presents reasons both philosophical and logical for diverting from the norm and choosing an all-plant diet for our companions!

I entered this book and the introduction of veganism to my three cats with skepticism and doubt. Can an animal whose natural inclination is that of a carnivore be content and healthy with an herbivorous diet?

Absolutely. My cats have been vegans for over a year, and are doing better than ever. Molly is 17 and spritely as a kitten. Katze, at 5, has lost her excess(ive) fat and become more active. Mietze, now 3, suffered from bloody stools and chronic gas from kittenhood to six months. She has flourished on her new diet; she no longer suffers from intestinal problems.

But is it natural to inflict our morals on our companions? This question seems to be the premise by which most people deny a vegan diet can sustain our feline friends. Yet we rarely ask ourselves if a cat's natural environment would include living indoors, sleeping on beds, crapping in a box, eating pre-packaged food, co-habitating with humans... much less taking down a steer for supper, drinking bovine milk or consuming processed cheese, cannibalizing their own kind.... need I go on?

With the threat of prionic disease for both us and our feline companions, veganism is not only an option but perhaps the most healthy alternative to a questionable mainstream food supply. As a bonus, you get to promote - via consumerism - companies who do not support the exploitation of animals.

But don't take my word for it; read the book. Check the facts. This is information every pet owner should know.

As one of the original purchasers of this book directly from the author earlier this year, it was just one resource of many that led me to conclude that cats can be raised vegan successfully, if we follow a few simple rules.

Rule one is that many if not most commercial cat foods contain products that are slowly poisoning our companion cats. At least two commercial products can avoid this poisoning.

Rule two is that cats require some essential ingredients that can be found in two commercial vegan cat foods sufficient to maintain the health of our cats.

Rule three is that if you do enough research on the subject, you can learn enough about the various issues to make an informed decision in favor of vegan cats without risking harm to your feline family.

Rule four is to ignore all the doom and gloom from your vet if they are unwilling to study the issue. My experience from interviewing several dozen vets is that they are part of the animal disease industry, and anything that threatens their source of income is something they are reluctant to support. Some rare animal friendly vets are enlightened enough to support the issue of vegan cats. You just need to seek them out. A current scientific study is being performed at the University of Pennsylvania, School of Vet Med, to lend some credibility to the issue. There is a vegetariancats website for further info.

My feline son has been eating Evolution Kibble for the past 6 months and his health has had a marked improvement. At 11 years of age he now has the energy of a kitten. His urine pH is at the acidic levels to avoid struvite problems. He has lost the fat that had accumulated around his middle over many years. He sleeps less and plays more. And best of all, no other animal had to die to feed my son.

Jed's book added significant information essential for me to make the decision to leave the world of Purina in favor of vegan food from Evolution. The book has a humor component which may enhance the message but the bottom line is that the content is valuable in making an informed decision. I highly recommend this easy to read book and encourage anyone interested in the issue to supplement their knowledge with additional information through other resources. An online search for vegan cats will bring up a wealth of information about this important issue.

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Since writing this review in 2004 I have had 3 years of personal use of the Evolution Feline Kibble product and no longer recommend this food for male cats. An inconsistent manufacturing program resulted in a lack of adequate control of urinary pH levels that the company originally promised. I now recommend a product called Vegecat pH which has been used successfully for the past year.

I now have 4 1/2 years of research and personal experience to back up my claim that vegan cats can be extremely healthy and survive quite well without sacrificing the lives of other animals.

After reading this book I was convinced. The topics of dietary health, natural diet, and the mass pet food industry are examined at length. Since reading this I have slowly transitioned my cat onto a vegan diet. It has been over a year and she is actually doing much better health wise. My vet gave my cat a much better bill of health this year than a year ago (no urinary tract or dental problems anymore.)

And since then I have discovered a range of products that cater to the vegan cat at about the same price of high end mass market cat food. This is much easier to do than one would think!

I was disappointed by this book. Many of the assertions made regarding cats are simply untrue, and the moralistic tone was quite offensive. His denial of the predator-prey relationship will baffle anyone who owns a cat that is not confined to the house.

He does not seem to differentiate between surviving and thriving. After much study it is clear that cats cannot do well long term on a vegan diet, he admits to seeing problems in male cats himself. Cats have nutritional requirements that can only be satisfied by meat (like Taurine), but in his disdain for meat processing methods he seems blinded by that.

The pet food industry is deplorable, but their is no reason why a raw meat diet cannot be provided that was humanely raised.

I read Obligate Carnivore in order to get more information about feeding my cats and dogs a vegan diet. This book is filled with great information about that topic. But it also offers so much more. It made me think about veganism in new ways. Most importantly, it's a really entertaining book. It's filled with funny stories that made me think about how I am living my life.

If you are thinking of cutting that last tie to the slaughter house by switching your cats and dogs to a vegan diet, if you already have but are looking for better ways to defend your choice to your friends, or if you just want an enjoyable book to read, I highly recommend Obligate Carnivore.

I have just finished reading "Obligate Carnivore," which makes a powerful and persuasive case in favor of all-vegan diets for companion cats and dogs. I then read the reviews here in the hope of discovering whether an equally persuasive case could be made for the other side.

But the MOST negative review here makes no such case. The reviewer claims that Gillen's arguments are ideological and based on emotion, not science. Did he read the same book I read? Yes, Gillen's personal position IS emotional and ideological, based on his belief that anything which increases the suffering of animals is morally and ethically indefensible. He makes this point clearly.

But the beauty of Gillen's book is that most of the points he makes are completely unrelated to his personal moral compass. He builds his case using logical arguments and scientific evidence, NOT emotion or ideology.

Furthermore, the negative reviewer claims that since "meat"-based pet foods are a by-product of animals that are slaughtered for human food, refusing to buy such pet food will do nothing to reduce animal suffering. This argument makes no sense to me: I assume that the pet food industry is no different from any other industry in that it is profit-driven. If the waste products of an industry that slaughters chickens, cows, and other sentient beings for human consumption could not be converted into profitable "meat"-based pet foods, I suspect the slaughterhouses would be driven to reform at least some of the outrageous and abusive conditions in which animals are kept, prior to being slaughtered. After all, they would no longer be able to profit from the carcasses of animals that died of neglect and abuse and are unfit for human consumption. To realize any profit at all from those animals, they would have to take better care of them before slaughtering them.

My companion cats and I have only recently begun moving toward a vegan lifestyle, but already I can see benefits. For instance, the "meat"-based kibble attracted flies and ants; so far, the vegan kibble hasn't attracted those pests, although the cats love it.

Jed Gillen's wonderful book has addressed all my concerns about switching my cats to a vegan lifestyle. Moreover, it's fun to read, informative (especially the delightful crash-course review of the Socratic method!), and blessedly brief (but so entertaining I was sorry when it ended). Thank you, Jed Gillen!

Let me preface this review by saying that I am a vegan, so I'm no cheerleader for the meat, egg, and dairy industries. That said... Despite Gillen's claims, the arguments for feeding cats a vegan diet are founded on emotion, not science. Some well-meaning but misguided vegans think that they have to enforce their ethical system upon their carnivorous companion animals. What they don't seem to realize is that using their absolute power over their animal companions to force them into an unnatural and dangerously inadequate diet is in itself a form of animal exploitation and abuse.

Nor does it dawn on them that refusing to buy meat-based pet food has absolutely no effect on the slaughter of farmed animals. Those animals are killed FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION; the meat that goes into pet food is either byproducts, or meat marked for human use. Until humans stop consuming animal flesh, animals will be slaughtered. It's as simple and straightforward as that. Not feeding your obligate carnivore meat is symbolic gesture rather than an effective one. You'd do better to donate the money you'd waste on vegan pet food to an animal advocacy organization like The Fund for Animals or United Poultry Concerns.

And if you're an ethical vegan, and you're that bothered by feeding carnivores the meat they physiologically need, do yourself and the animals a favor and adopt a rabbit or guinea pig. Many dogs can and do thrive on vegan or vegetarian diets--they are omnivorous--but cats are true carnivores and *need* meat in their diets. For a cat, a vegan diet is most likely to be a slow and painful death sentence. No amount of energy and good intentions can trump millions of years of evolution. Don't gamble with the health and lives of animals who love you, trust you, and are utterly dependent upon you, just for the sake of ideology.

Remember when you first learned that people can live without eating meat? It was radical thinking at first because, after all, vegetarianism turns upside down all the rules we learned through childhood about health. It rearranges facts that we've held so dear throughout the years: that meat is good for us; that it's necessary for good health; that we're, by nature, obligated to eating it. For many people, reading John Robbins' Diet For a New America was a turning point - the book that flicked the switch in thousands of people's brains. We don't need meat! Suddenly a radical concept became normal. They vowed to stop eating animal products because the information Robbins presents is undeniable and inspirational. It simply made sense.

Jed Gillen is the John Robbins of the pet food industry. His book, Obligate Carnivore, exposes vegan guilt, vegan hypocrisy - that we are so firm about avoiding animal products, but we (gasp!) buy them for our companion animals. The book offers up evidence that cats can live healthy, happy lives without meat products with a little help from supplemental taurine. It doesn't focus on dogs because dogs don't require taurine for health, stripping them from the "obligate carnivore" label.

One of the many insights Gillen has is the leather shoe commentary. If you've ever been to an animal rights protest, you've probably had someone yell out to you, "Your shoes are made of leather, though!" Well, no, actually, they're synthetic. So there! Where they would really trump us is if they yelled out, "You feed your cat meat, though!" Hmmm. You got me there.

Obligate Carnivore is a good laugh, considering it's riddled with very serious considerations about cat health and the downer topic of farm animal abuse. Once I got accustomed to his humor (it took a few pages), I found Jed upbeat, fun, and bold. Chapter titles include "I Was a Vegetarian Idiot" and "Gwagwagwe." This last one had me laughing out loud for at least five minutes. That's a long time laughing; I thought I wasn't going to stop.

A smile creeps to my face remembering the chapter "The Aching-Ass Equation."

Without the humor, Obligate Carnivore would sound to a carnivore cat guardian like an annoying vegetarian to a meateater - a vegetarian who spews out facts that the meateater just isn't open to hearing. Even if you're unwilling to change your cat's diet, the perspective in this book is absolutely imperative to examine if you don't eat meat for ethical reasons. Vegetarians pride themselves in being committed to exploring the truth of health, environment and animal welfare issues. Therefore, if evidence suggests (and healthy cats prove) that vegan diets work, the obligation is to take a look.

"You're not feeding your cats and dog meat? You're crazy!" Ah, but I'm not. I'm just vegan. --Reviewed by Caity McCardell

There's a great deal of preaching but very little science in this book. Mr. Gillen cannot cite a single controlled study that conclusively demonstrates that a vegetarian (or vegan) diet supplemented with additives (taurine, in this case) is safe and healthy for cats. While it is possible with the correct knowledge and ingredients to formulate a diet for cats that excludes meat products, in the hands of a careless or uninformed person such an attempt will only lead to illness, blindness and an early death for a cat.

Mr. Gillen makes quite an issue of the fact that his stand on vegetarianism is a moral decision. For a moral choice to be genuine, it must be voluntary, and it appears that Mr. Gillen has yet to find a cat that has made the same moral choice he has. Forcing an animal with over fifteen million years of carnivorous evolutionary behavior built into its system to accept a diet that is completely unnatural to its physiology is is no moral triumph; it's simply another instance of anthropocentric totalitarianism - of trying to make animals more like US because WE believe we're the inherently superior organism.

Mr. Gillen would serve the ecosystem better if he would concentrate his efforts solely toward humans, and leave the smaller animals to make their own moral decisions.

.. and he or she will tell you that cats are indeed obligate carnivores. I wholeheartedly agree with the reasoned points in the review titled "Well-intentioned but wrong-headed" (or something to that effect): while vegans (and vegetarians) may be conflicted about feeding meat to their cats, you are doing your cat/s a great disservice by depriving them of meat. Supplementing a cat's vegan diet with taurine will still not address their nutritional needs: cats need a very high-protein (animal protein), low carbohydrate diet, and a vegan diet cannot provide this, even when supplemented with taurine. I am no fan of factory-farming, and am a strict vegetarian, but compromising a cat's health is not an acceptable form of protest against the pet food- and meat-production industries. I'd recommend purchasing free-range organic meat and preparing your own cat food (see "The Natural Cat" for recipes), rather than depriving cats of the animal protein they must have in order to be healthy. That our cats need meat is an uncomfortable contradiction for vegetarian/vegan cat owners, but given the incredible problems with cat overpopulation, abuse, and neglect in this country, I believe taking in, and caring well for cats is the ethical choice, even if they need to eat meat.