The Luxury of Cats

The Luxury of Domestic Cats.  In 2017, the number of domestic cats in the US is estimated 95.6 million.*  About 35% of all households have at least one cat.  In fact, the average number of cats per household is 2.19 cats. Cats consume much food. An eight pound cat requires a daily diet of about 300 calories, or about five ounces of dry food.  This amounts to  10,950,000,000 pounds of effective dry cat food per year.  Eleven billion pounds of dry cat food is a lot of food, indeed enough to feed 14,400,400 people per year living on a generous 2000 calorie/day diet.  This implies the amount of cat food the US uses just for its cats would feed the entire populations and more of each of the following countries: Somalia, Burundi, Benin, Bolivia, Tunisia, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Belgium, United Arab Emirates, Cuba.

Roughly speaking, every seven American cats consume the food of a single human being.

In the great scheme of things, our domestic cats consume far more food, high protein food at that, than any of the of countries having a population of 14.4 million or less. This totals more than 120 countries.

 Now, you want to do dogs?  Those guys can really eat…  And there are a lot of them, about 78,000,000 just in the USA.  Stay tuned.

All rich countries are equally guilty, adoring their pets with love and a generous food supply, while indirectly feeding on their love in return.

Finally. If you want to get really grim, it is not a stretch to say the elimination of all cats and dogs could completely end world human hunger problems forever. It would end depletion of fish from the seas, as well.  Well fed humans can now think of more than just their next meal.  Thus, the end of world hunger problems could result in a new spike in human births.  Perhaps our domestic pets provide a contraceptive effect for even greater world populations.  Ooh.

*https://www.statista.com/statistics/198102/cats-in-the-united-states-since-2000/