Can Cats Be Vegetarian?

    As we all know, cats are different from omnivorous dogs. Cats are obligate carnivores, and only meat can provide them with the necessary nutrients. Without meat, cats can suffer from serious health problems, such as malnutrition, heart disease, kidney disease, blindness, and, in severe cases, death. What is the reason why cats must eat meat? We’ll take you through it in this blog from MeetClaw.

Reasons for why cats are carnivores

Special body structure

1. Not good at grinding

    Mammalian teeth can be divided into incisors, canines, and molars, which play the role of opening, tearing, and grinding food, respectively. But cats’ molars are underdeveloped, which allows them to crush and grind food. Also, cats have pointed teeth. There is no grinding surface for chewing food. Moreover, their upper and lower jaw teeth are staggered and cannot bite like humans, so cats cannot rely on the collision of molars to complete chewing when eating. For this reason, meats that are smoother and easier to swallow than plant fibers are their preferred food.

2. Lack of salivary amylase

    Salivary amylase can hydrolyze most of the starch into maltose in the oral cavity, and then hydrolyze it into glucose for absorption under the action of the small intestine and pancreas. However, there is no salivary amylase in the saliva of cats, which is only found in the cat’s digestive tract. The amylase in the intestine can only initially hydrolyze starch components, so cats cannot digest and absorb carbohydrates well.

3. Cats have shorter digestive tracts

    In addition to lacking salivary amylase, cats have shorter digestive tracts than other animals. The long digestive tract helps the gut absorb the cellulose from plants, but because cats have a short digestive tract, they are only good at processing faster-digesting meats, not plants.

Energy supply-demand

1.Poor absorption of glucose in cats

    Carbohydrates, fats, and proteins are the three essential nutrients for humans and animals. Human intake of glucose can adapt glucose transport to carbohydrate intake. But the cat’s transport system is difficult to change with carbohydrate intake. Therefore, the utilization of glucose by cats is very low and mainly depends on protein conversion. This results in cats’ energy supply mainly coming from fat and protein, so they prefer to eat meat rather than plants.

2. Nutritional needs

    Some nutrients that cats need are not synthesized by themselves and must be obtained from food. If cats are deficient in these nutrients, several health problems can occur. However, it is difficult for cats to absorb and convert plant-derived nutrients, and some nutrients only exist in meat, which also determines that cats need to be meat-based. Therefore, when choosing a food for your cat, we recommend choosing one that is high in meat and protein.