Those who are guardians of animals such as dogs and cats are privileged to share a special connection with animals. In most societies throughout the world, human and non-human animals live very separate disconnected existences. It is a rare experience to interact with members of another species on such an intimate level as we often do with dogs, cats, and other animal companions or "pets". Clearly people who share their homes and families with adopted animals are remarkably generous in their offering of love to animals in need.

Downbound recognizes and appreciates your unique compassion for animals, and strives to help you in making the lives of your animal companions as healthy and enjoyable as possible. In addition to helping you give your animal companions the very best products and care available, Downbound offers you the ability to protect other animals at the same time. The disconnected reality in which we live is such that some animals—like dogs and cats—are given privileged positions in our loving homes, while others are hidden away in factory farms, freight trucks, and slaughterhouses... destined for our dinner plates and those of our animal companions. In reality, those animals we call companions or "pets" are more similar than not to those animals we call food; they all share great capacity for love, joy, fear, pain, and connectedness with humans.

For some people, their compassion for all animals is expressed by living a vegan or vegetarian lifestyle, which results in calling no animals food. But feeding our animal companions a vegan or vegetarian diet may seem like a more complicated issue. After all, animal companions are like children in that they are completely dependent on us for their every need, and perhaps we shouldn't impose our ethics on them. This concern comes from an implicit understanding that veganism and vegetarianism are ethical decisions, okay for consenting adult humans, but not okay for non-consenting animals who wouldn't choose those diets in a "natural" scenario.

In the wild, dogs would eat an omnivorous diet of whatever they could scavenge, and cats would eat a carnivorous diet consisting mostly of small birds and mice (unfortunately for the birds and mice!). But our dog and cat companions do not live in the wild, and "natural" has become living indoors with humans. Dogs—like humans—are omnivores and can live quite healthfully on a vegan dog food (also see Vegan Dog Nutrition). Cats on the other hand are built to be carnivores, and cannot synthesize certain nutrients, like taurine and Vitamin A, from a typical vegan diet. However, since our cat companions are lucky enough to have human homes as their natural environment, they are privy to all the wonders of human ingenuity and technology. Cats too can live long, happy, and extremely healthy lives on high-quality specially formulated vegan cat food (also see Vegan Cat Nutrition).

As for imposing our ethics on our animal companions, let's also consider the morality of imposing our ethics on cows, chickens, pigs, fish, and other animals who could easily become the unwilling central attractions on our animal companions' dinner dishes. With perfectly healthy vegan alternatives for dogs and cats available here at Downbound.com, we can care wonderfully for our loving companions, while not exploiting the rights of other less fortunate animals.