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Comment by yarper | Hacker News Reader

Please don't try to make cats vegan or vegetarian - and please stop anyone that does - I'm surprised the author didn't bring this up.

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And may I suggest if you are vegan and want to adopt an animal companion, consider a rabbit (a bonded pair if you can). They are wonderful loving creatures who will cuddle next to you while you sit on the couch, and their diet is naturally 100% plant-based. They make a perfect DINK pet too since they sleep during the workday. Unfortunately many end up in shelters after someone's kids grow tired of them.

Do they chew on furniture? This is a serious question. I would like to have a non-meat-eating pet after our dogs are gone. I used to have rats but I couldn't take them dying every 2 years.

Rabbits live 3 years. And they eat cables.

Rats too. They also like sweat pants and bed sheets.

Rats can chew through concrete and anything you love.

Rabbits, properly cared for (i.e., kept indoors with space to run and unlimited hay), live 7 years.

Split loom shielding is a cheap and effective way to protect cables: https://www.amazon.com/Install-Bay-Split-Loom-Inch/dp/B005V9...

Depends on the rabbit. Our (thinly upholstered) couch has two bite holes in its corner, but the rest of our furniture is quite intact. They're much more likely to chew things on the floor like rugs or cables, and then only if they're "in the way".

Bitter apple spray works well to keep them from chewing carpets and rugs: https://www.amazon.com/Grannick-Bitter-Apple-Ferrets-small-a... and split-loom shielding protects cables: https://www.amazon.com/Install-Bay-Split-Loom-Inch/dp/B005V9...

Beside "housekeeping", rabbits chew to keep their teeth short. Apple twigs and compressed hay cubes work great to meet this need and prevents them from seeking other things to chew.

Rabbits live around seven years, properly cared for. Ours is in her fifth year.

Our vet has said that the thinking these days is that with proper care, 8-10 is reasonable for our minilop. Ours is 8 this year, and going strong!

Also, the chewing does depend... quite a few scarves that my wife has from when our bunny was younger don't have the tassels that were designed on em, and he did modify a laptop power cable that we later named "Shocky". Now that he's older, he's much more respectful of our things.

I try to look at the upside – our rabbit recently got behind my recording equipment and scissored a ¼″ balanced audio cable. Just so happens I needed a ¼″ TRS jack for a project so it saved me a purchase…

What about their waste? Can they be trained to only go outside?

You will not find any luck convincing a rabbit to go for a walk like a dog :) They are about as obedient as a cat.

Rabbits (which ought to live indoors, away from cold, predators, and fright) are easily litter-box trained. You'll find that most at a shelter already are. (Our rabbit's habits are impeccable, though not all are.) The best litter is compressed wood pellets (e.g. wood stove pellets), which traps odor quite well. They will sometimes leave individual cocoa-puff-sized poops in strategic locations to mark their territory, but these are hard so they don't stain or smell.

Seriously. This kills the cat.

That and curiosity.

So true. My cat really wanted to head outside to check out a bobcat and the Coyotes that were hunting it recently.

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