I'm not going to use the quote function, ted, but will simply try to respond on a point by point basis.
1. You are right that cats do not refuse anything but meat. I think I already mentioned catnip. And the fact that they nibble on grass (not really eat it like a meal, right?) does possibly indicate that an all-meat diet might not be enough. I don't have a problem with that and I mis-stated what I was trying to say. Fair enough.
2. We have been taught that dogs are carniverous. I disagree with that. From my experience raising and training them (as well as looking at the contents of dog food bags!) I feel pretty safe in claiming that dogs are, in our time now, actually omnivores primarily! This does not mean they always were, however. Even in terms of evolution there would have been a time when a dog precurser was not a meat-eater, but that this had to develop. In terms of evolution, where canines were always canines, there was a time when they were not meat-eaters.
3. Check Genesis 1:30 for what life was like before the Flood.
4. This, then, makes it obvious to me that there was a time when these animals were not carnivores. However, knowing their requirements for high-grade proteins, I therefore assume that was available in some form or forms of plant life which are not around today on earth.
5. Yes, we have observed major trends and draw general conclusions. Our mistake is in thinking that the present is the key to the past and that is an assumption which may not stand up. The past may be the key to the present, instead, in line with what the Bible tells us and other evidences we find that seem to fit there, such as the article mentioned at the beginning of this thread.
6. I don't have to 'imbue' dogs or anything else with the ability to make choices as to favorite foods. They already do that. And favorite foods for individual animals are not always what the rest of that family of organisms prefers! In our dog history, we have found, for instance, that some dogs refuse some types of dog food and gobble others like there is no tomorrow. Others seem to prefer the kind that was scorned by their house mates. It has gotten very interesting, and this is just commercial dog food! Given the choice between a fruit salad and dog food, we had a dog that literally preferred the former. We tried, as a joke one time, and found out that what we were joking about was really true. She really did prefer the fruit! Horses are the same. They will all eat basic alfalfa hay, but some prefer some kinds of fruit to others. We had one who refused apples! Loved carrots but not apples. Go figure. Animals have their preferences where food is concerned. By you challenging me on this point, I can only figure you haven't been around animals much!
7. It is not a "big conspiracy thing" to say that we have not been correct in some of our conclusions and in what we have been taught and taught others! It is simply saying we don't know it all!
8. Loss of function, genetically, means that there is a reaction which is not occurring on a chemical level due to a genetic change. It can also mean a protein is folding differently presenting a less specific substrate. There is always a loss of specificity where mutations are concerned.
9. I have never found that defending the Bible takes mental contortions. It does take education in some other areas, though, such as idioms of other cultures and the ability to look up words in concordances to check root meanings and such. But this is not contortions. This is simple scholarship, as would be done, hopefully, with any serious bit of research.
10. I understand that you don't see the relevance of any of this. That does make me wonder why you would spend the time trying to attack what I was questioning, however.
11. Evolution requires that complexity be gained in order to be lost. We don't question the loss of complexity. We question the evolutionary claim regarding its gain. And, unless you started with complex life as it is seen today and claim things only went downhill from there (which is pretty close to a creation argument) then it is absolutely required that complexity be gained since the beginning cells in the evolutionary scenario.
12. It is no unwarranted extrapolation that functions are going downhill and not up. It is called genetic load and it is extremely well documented.
13. Mutations do, indeed, appear to occur randomly. The fact that it appears to be random may be our lack of understanding, but that is not something to do with this thread. However the actual mathematical chance of a mutation which is expressed being not harmful or lethal to the organism is about 1000 to 1. This makes it very difficult, FROM WHAT WE OBSERVE, to get from fish to fowl. The number of mutations that would take would be in the hundreds of thousands. That means that the mutations would have had to survive in a population through millions upon millions of harmful mutations and, not only that, these non-harmful mutations would have not only had to have added both form and function to the organism, but would have had to build upon each other to do it. Since mutations, as you have stated, appear to be random, the chances of even ten mutations building upon each other through time to produce a possible new form or function is mathematically zero. There is NO observation in science today in genetics or any other field to indicate this can happen. Evolution does not have a process to fall back on. It simply is declared to us all that we are here so, of course, it had to have happened! Not good enough. That is faith, not science. I prefer science.
14. Mt. Improbable is Dawkins' idea regarding evolution. And you have to start from the bottom for evolution to be evolution. Creation does not have that problem. We are quite convinced that it all started in a complex and created state with zero initial mutations and has been running downhill from there. Downhill does not an improbability make. It is the natural course of known events.