Well personally I do think we have a moral obligation to reduce harm and I don’t see a good reason to privilege the life of one animal over another (humans included). Veganism as an ideology however is about what is practicable, and while it appears that cats can be transitioned it is very early days and can only be done responsibly if you are in a position to afford medical oversight and understand how to select correctly formulated foods.

As a vegan I am against pet keeping, but lots of abandoned animals exist and they need care there aren’t institutions to provide so they end up in homes. I have a couple of rescue dogs living with me atm for example. In situations like this I think where possible we have a responsibility to juggle their needs and desires with broader harms. Like I don’t let the dogs I care for hunt wildlife for fun, and give them enriching search games instead.

Abstracting away that death through food doesn’t really change it.

But we’re not insane, it’s early days and while evidence suggests for cats its possible it isn’t trivial and should be attempted responsibly, which nobody involved in this shitshow was claiming otherwise. The only people denying reality are the banned commentator who was saying that cats cannot survive on plant in the face of patient explanations by another user and the lemmy.world admin who tried to remove that user’s comments in favour of the science denying ones.