September 17th, 2014

Roseanne Rosanadana

How to defend yourself on the internet?

I notice without exception that if you bring an unpopular opinion to a discussion group, the other users will dogpile on you and bully you without allowing you to speak your piece. They generally gang up and will say as a last retort: "Don't let the door hit you on the ass as you leave!" [This has happened to me in more than one community at LiveJournal, and stunned me at what jerks people can be under cloak of relative anonymity.]

I've mentioned here—but well over a year ago—that my terrier and two cats were all vegans and doing well with the diet. (The cats, naturally, were being fed a carefully-supplemented diet including VegiCat pHi to keep the pH of their urine low.)

Well, the dog still is vegan, and is healthy, but one of my cats—named Tripod—developed a recurring sore that kept losing hair; by the time the sore was the size of a quarter, I took him to the vet, who put the fear of god in me for choosing to feed him anything but meat, and I relented and figured I'd try feeding him canned meat-based cat food in order to see if the hair grew back. [I know there's not a veterinarian in town that will recommend a vegan diet for cats under any circumstances, so I knew from the start I was on my own with this. It took me about a year to fully transition Tripod to vegan because I was so hesitant.]

The other cat—Stacy—refuses to eat her vegan kibble, naturally, when she sees Tripod get the Good Stuff™, so for the time being they're both being fed the same canned venison and rabbit—it turns out Tripod is also allergic to poultry, which touches off the reaction—but for now they're both eating heartily and Tripod's hair is growing back. I haven't closed the book on transitioning at least Stacy back to vegan, but I'm not in a hurry.

Here's a video of brilliant Tripod opening the bathroom door:

(crossposted from veganpets)

[Also—is there any way to add tags to those already available? I'm not finding that the tags available are always appropriate.]