Is "owning" a cat vegan?

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NonZeroSum
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Re: Is "owning" a cat vegan?

Post by NonZeroSum »

PsYcHo wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2016 10:00 pm
ArmouredAbolitionist wrote:
brimstoneSalad wrote:Consequentialists will usually keep a cat indoors. While the cat may not prefer it, it's safer for the cat, and saves local wildlife.
A deontologist would consider that imprisonment, and would release the cat even if it were murdering neighborhood children.
:lol: Hahaha! What? Really? Do you think that even the most devout Franciobots would allow animals to kill neighborhood children, in order to avoid violating their "inherent rights"? :shock:

Perhaps you were exaggerating the behavior of deontological vegans to demonstrate the flaws of their philosophy, but I don't think they'd go that far. Even the god of deontological veganism himself, Gary Francione, sometimes appears to try to substantiate his stances with consequentialism. It's like he somewhat realizes that his ideology is flawed and will turn of skeptically-minded people. :?
I mean this with no disrespect as I am in the process of learning the difference of deontologist vs consequentialist, but could you more in depth into why a deontlogical vegan would be against this? You mention the "flaws" of deontological philosophy, and I would like to hear both arguments.
Likely an absolute stance like not interfering with their primal instincts, hard wired behavior to hunt. I wouldn't have a problem with cats hunting if they were quick killers and devoured their whole prey like the common ancestor they share with wildcats today.

Hard-line consequentialists would like to stop all animal predation in an ideal future, so they might lock them in even if a) they hunted only for food b) were good hunters and scavengers and it could be a means of meeting all their nutritional needs without having to feed them cow and c) there was no risk to endangered species in your area.

As an ethical nihilist if circumstances met those 3 criteria as it might depending on location(roads, endangered species) and certain breeds* of cats, I'd be fine with it. Otherwise just have to make their home entertaining with lots of toys that you can throw around or move around on their own like laser lights to exercise that desire to hunt.

*I haven't looked into it but we have wildcat crosses in Scotland and Northumbria, so maybe they wouldn't be so cruel to their prey along with maybe some traditional farmers ratter breeds?

If you are a responsible owner there is a good argument for being one of the people who does adopt cats from no kill shelters and tries to feed them vegan whilst either keeping them inside in the case of an endangered wildlife population at risk from domestic cat predation or sterilizing them in the case of local wildcat populations to protect their endangered gene pool and obviously just generally sterilizing for the overpopulation issue and to phase out domestic cats that are reliant on us killing other animals for food and having to conform to our dangerous cities and unfulfilling lifestyles for cats, just focused on letting cats roam side of things.
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Jamie in Chile
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Re: Is "owning" a cat vegan?

Post by Jamie in Chile »

Owning a cat is vegan yes.

However buying or selling a cat is not vegan or at least not particularly compatible with how vegans think.
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