They aren't your companions, you are exploiting them for companionship. These meat eating pets can't consent to a vegan diet, they are also not ethically required by their choice to not engage in the meat system.

That's your choice, you are forcing that choice on an animal that isn't getting anything from you they wouldn't get with a non-vegan pet owner, your love isn't special.

You could ethically choose to keep any number of naturally vegan animals. You selfishly choose to keep a cat or a dog cause you like them more.

Shit is messed up in my opinion and you buried the lead with your post. I'm glad other people were around to give context to this.

That is the no true scotsman fallacy. I could also say that bringing animals into our homes when they were originally from the wild is the hypocrisy here.

I am not convinced that depending on self-reporting of veterinary outcomes from people who are feeding their cat a vegan diet is a reliable way to structure the study

In fact, I would say that purely as a personal and anecdotal conclusion, I believe that the self reporting of an indistinguishable outcome from this study probably means that these vegan diets are harming the cats significantly, if the hidden factor of vegan-diet-feeding guardians underreporting bad outcomes were to be included.

https://theconversation.com/is-it-really-safe-to-feed-your-cat-a-vegan-diet-213356

Most of the health benefits reported for this group also did not reach statistical significance, which may be the result of simply not having enough animals in the study.

The authors reported a tendency towards positive effects of vegan diets. This means there was a general trend (which was sometimes strong), but doesn’t necessarily mean there is a very predictable relationship.

As a survey study, it’s not possible to confirm exactly what the cats were eating. Many of them went outside and may have hunted down meaty treats even while on a vegan diet. Some owners also fed their cats treats and essential nutrient supplements, so any beneficial effects (or a lack of harmful effects) may not be due to diet alone.

Another missing piece of information is how long the cats were kept on the diet. We might assume one year – but this isn’t specifically stated. This is important information since deficiency diseases can take time to develop.

Finally, any study assessing animal health will have inherent limitations if it’s designed as a survey. Pet owners usually aren’t medically trained and their “opinions” can be subjective and therefore biased.

Owners who had removed or reduced meat in their own diet were over-represented in the study. These people may already anticipate vegan diets are better for health, and this thinking could influence their responses.

It’s also worth noting the study was funded by ProVeg International – a food awareness organisation that promotes plant-based products. While this might not have impacted the validity of data, it could have influenced the stance taken when reporting on the results.