IT SOUNDS silly, Sandy Anderson admits, but she believes her unique brand of vegan cat food — yes, meat-free food for carnivorous animals — creates softer and nicer pets.

"It makes them more gentle in their personality and their outlook," she says with a Cheshire cat grin. This is good news for mice because Mrs Anderson's customers have told her that their vegan-food-eating cats have stopped killing rodents, preferring simply to play with them.

Mrs Anderson, founder of Veganpet dog and cat food, hopes to capitalise on an increasing trend in which pet owners are shaping their animals' diets according to what they themselves eat or believe. In the US, for instance, Jewish pet owners can buy Evanger's Super Premium Gold Dinners, certified kosher by the Chicago Rabbinical Council. Then there's socially responsible Righteous Dog Food.

"Gourmet pet foods are increasingly being bought by households where the pet is treated more as a child than animal," says the Australian Companion Animal Council.

Australia has one of the highest rates of pet ownership in the world, even though dog and cat populations have declined recently. About 38 million dogs, cats, fish, birds and other pets live domesticated lives. Birds and fish make up 29 million of these, and there are 3.7 million dogs and 2.4 million cats.

The pet food industry, worth more than $2 billion a year, is dominated by multinational companies. The key pet food makers include giants such as Mars Petcare and Nestle Purina.

Mrs Anderson's efforts are minuscule in comparison. Her company sells a limited number of products by word of mouth but she hopes vegetarian and vegan pet owners will take to her "cruelty-free" extruded soy and corn dishes which she says are human-quality, comply with high American nutritional standards and have passed scientific testing. However, Fat Cat, her rescued moggy, refused despite desperate exhortations during a lengthy photo session to eat the stuff. He didn't look all that hungry, anyway.

Mrs Anderson, a vegetarian whose business venture was motivated by a love of animals, does not dispute the obvious: cats are meat-eating animals. But she asks: "What is the harm if I can provide absolutely every other nutritional requirement from a vegan source and the cat grows and thrives and is very happy." Her customers' cats have eaten vegan food for five years, landing on their feet in recent blood tests.

Dogs, she says, can adapt to a vegan diet more easily than cats. Ned, a rescued stray dog owned by Mrs Anderson, similarly did not eat vegan food put before him. Oh well.