Why are there no pork or other pigmeat cat food varieties? The range gets ever more exotic with game

Why are there no pork or other pigmeat cat food varieties? The range gets ever more exotic with game and seafood varieties but I never see 'Kit-e-Whisk' with pork or ham or bacon. And do French cats get horse flavours?

Leo Lyons, Wye, Kent UK

• Given the fate of many moorland ponies, I should think there is quite a lot of horse flavour in cat food already.

  Tim Green, Bradford, UK

• When I was a child, we were always told not to give our cat scraps of pork as it would upset its tummy. My understanding is that they can't digest it properly?

  Ali Fleming, London

• What Ali Fleming says explains why my neighbour's cat that I was looking after left a large pool of diarrhoea, the morning after I fed it some Sainsbury's smoked ham. (However, it still doesn't explain why it missed the litter tray, and cr*pped all over the carpet).

  Guy Dowman, Tokyo, Japan

• My cat adores pork, ham and bacon. The only thing she won't eat is lettuce, however, so this doesn't prove much.

  Jonathan, Lancaster, UK

• Although it is undoubtedly true that horses do end up in the cheaper brands of cat food, the large companies who make the major brands do not use it. All the stuff they use is slaughterhouse by-products fit for human consumption but not wanted by the human food trade, so that they would otherwise go to waste. This is so that they can ensure quality, consistency and adequate supply. So, since cats cannot be vegetarians, if you are a veggie, feed your cat something made by one of the biggest companies. You will then at least know that no extra animals were killed to feed your cat. As to why no pork, it is because waste from the pork butchery trade is used to make sausages or fed back to pigs (which are omnivorous) and thus is not available on the meat market. Cats love ham and it seems to do no harm in small quantities. As to why no sparrow flavour, the population of sparrows is falling quite quickly enough (which is often wrongly blamed on cats) without their being caught to put in tins.

  Susan Deal, Sheffield UK