bodhi tree swaying

New Scientist has a thought-provoking article about work by Robert and Brenda Vale, two architects who specialize in sustainable living at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand and who have looked into the ecological impact of pets. Apparently keeping a dog can be worse for the environment than running an SUV:

They calculated, for example, that a medium-sized dog would consume 90 grams of meat and 156 grams of cereals daily in its recommended 300-gram portion of dried dog food. At its pre-dried weight, that equates to 450 grams of fresh meat and 260 grams of cereal. That means that over the course of a year, Fido wolfs down about 164 kilograms of meat and 95 kilograms of cereals.

It takes 43.3 square metres of land to generate 1 kilogram of chicken per year – far more for beef and lamb – and 13.4 square metres to generate a kilogram of

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So it’s possible that your cat could become a vegetarian, but here are some good reasons why you might want to think about doing that. (And although cats live a long time, you might want to consider a less carni-centric companion animal next time). This article’s from the New York Times.

Cat Got Your Fish?
By PAUL GREENBERG
Published: March 21, 2009

My cat Coco died recently. Actually we euthanized him to alleviate his suffering from cancer. And while this was a sad moment, it was made less sad because Coco’s death also alleviated ever so slightly the suffering of the sea.

Coco, like most American cats, ate fish. And a great deal of them — more in a year than the average African human, according to Jason Clay at the World Wildlife Fund. And unlike the chicken or beef Coco also gobbled up, …

If you’ve become a vegetarian you might feel uneasy about keeping a cat and feeding it on dead animals. Cats require essential amino acids, fatty acids, and vitamins that are hard, if not impossible, to obtain from a vegetarian diet. But there are now cat foods specially formulated with vegetarian ingredients, as this Scientific American article points out.

Unlike dogs and other omnivores, cats are true (so-called “obligate”) carnivores: They meet their nutritional needs by consuming other animals and have a higher protein requirement than many other mammals. Cats get certain key nutrients from meat—including taurine, arachidonic acid, vitamin A and vitamin B12—that can’t be sufficiently obtained from plant-based foods. Without a steady supply of these nutrients, cats can suffer from liver and heart problems, not to mention skin irritation and hearing loss.

As such, a cat’s ideal diet is made up mainly of

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