Stop Laughing at the Fat Cats -- And Help Them: They are not to Blame – U.S. has been Duped by the Pet Food Industry

Carnivores eat meat, herbivores eat greens, and omnivores eat everything. Animals labeled carnivores eat primarily meat. True carnivores (obligate carnivores) eat nothing else. Herbivores, grazing animals like antelopes, deer, and cattle, are obligate herbivores. Most bear species are omnivores, eating primarily meat, but also berries, roots, and grubs. Polar bears, on the other hand, are true carnivores, eating fish, seals, and the flesh of anything they can catch.

There are certain basic nutritional rules that cannot be broken without serious adverse consequences. One is that true carnivores should not and cannot eat a vegetable diet any more than true herbivores can eat meat. If tricked into it, the disease that results from breaking this rule is not the fault of the consumer. And the consequences can be severe, as with Mad Cow Disease.

Mad Cow or Mad Cat

The epidemic of fat cats (outside of government and business) has mushroomed. A little detective work indicates a common thread between Mad Cow and the plight of this nation’s felines. Mad Cow was traced to opportunists in the animal feed industry disposing of meat scraps for profit by grinding it up and adding it to cattle feed labeled as ‘protein’.

Many overlooked the sudden appearance of Mad Cow when offal began being fed to cattle, merely assuming it was spread by their eating infected tissue of other cattle. This can explain the ultimate rampant spread, but back up the truck – where did the first twenty or thirty thousand cases come from? It started somewhere with some cows independently getting ill. The theory is that even the smallest amount of meat is simply something no self-respecting herbivore would knowingly eat, and should never have been in their feed to begin with.

From Meat to Transfat-Soaked Corn Flakes

The history of cat food tells a similar story of how domestic cats have suffered from major non-species-specific dietary changes over the years, as a result of new rules advocated for cat care. It was just part of a plan to deal with the millions of strays swamping shelters.

Humane societies advertised spay/neuter programs, keeping cats indoors, and leaving food and water available. The pet food industry looked to capitalize on these changes, developing new canned foods and cheaper convenience foods that wouldn’t spoil as quickly. Bags of grain-based dry food flew off the shelves.

Today our cat friends are the ‘biggest losers’, and may soon justify their own TV show – overweight, undernourished, and just as depressed as their human counterparts. The sad thing is, they did nothing wrong. They ate what they were given, tricked by addictive chemical flavorings to consume substances they would never eat in the wild, trapped indoors without sunshine, unable to eat normal diets of mice and insect proteins, getting sicker and sicker, and dying at two-thirds of their normal life spans (and sometimes twice or three times their normal weight).

Add to that over vaccination causing skin allergies, and the “cure” for the itching is a cortisone shot which increases both appetite and girth. Suddenly that supposed-to-be-10-pound kitty is 15 pounds and growing. When are pet owners going to wake up and realize what this system of pet care is doing to their cats? How ironic that the new rules intended to protect them are condemning them to a life of obesity, ill health, and early demise. It's little wonder that since the profit-centered corruption of the human U.S. food industry has been allowed, it now extends to that of our pets.

Responsible Cat Owners Should Get Wise

In his February 2009 Real Health e-letter, Dr. William Campbell Douglass exposes the latest on America’s obesity problem – a research theory that blames a virus. He summarized the study's real finding that the virus “can make people who are already fat gain weight because they have more fat cells for the virus to replicate… not that fat people are fat because they have caught this virus! As if more proof was needed that personal accountability was all but dead in our culture.”

Feb 21, 2009 9:08 PM

Guest :

You are partly correct, and partly looking for a conspiracy theory.

The science on neutering cats is very clear - neutered cats are likely to be overweight compared to their sexually entire cousins because they do not self-regulate their food intake. This is most certainly the biggest biological cause of feline obesty. The increase in feline obesity in Western pet owning nations also coincides with the increase in neutering, which in owned cat populations can be as high as 95% neutered.

Imagine a population of humans with 95% eunuchs - would you expect them all to be lean and healthy? Not likely. Especially if they were eunuchs with a poor biological ability to regulate their caloric intake.

Ever seen a fat wild cat (lion/tiger/etc)? Even in times of plenty, wild carnivores eat to their requirements. Not so their domesticated neutered relatives.

Yes, nutrition, confinement and human management of cats plays a part in their health, but the answer is not as simple as pointing the finger at some sort of industry conspiracy. What we are dealing with in cats is the inadvertant consequences of mass neutering. Should we stop neutering? Definitely not. But lets be realistic and look at the evidence about cause and effect.

(interestingly, the obesity epidemic in humans is probably due to many things too, but scientists are still scrabbling to find the BIG ONE. What is the one big cause for generations of fat people? Why do so many of our species not self-regulate their caloric intake, in the face of plenty?)

- a vet in Australia.