Passing polymorphic ArrayLists to a method expecting ArrayList superclass

Question

In short, is it possible? In keeping in line with my other threads and a program using cats, I give you this example using Cats and Animals (a cat is an animal):
public void go()
     ArrayList<Cat> lotsOfCats = new ArrayList<Cat>();
     feed(lotsOfCats);
void feed(ArrayList<Animal> animals)
     //feed the animals
}So an error is thrown because the function is expecting an ArrayList of Animals and I'm trying to pass in an ArrayList of Cats. The function shouldn't have any problem dealing with the cats though because a cat IS AN Animal, so anything you can do to/find out about the superclass animal you can certainly apply to a cat. I've tried casting the lotsOfCats ArrayList like so:
ArrayList<Animal> myAnimals = (ArrayList<Animal>)lotsOfCats;But it didn't work. So is there any way for me to reference the ArrayList as type Animal without necessarily having to originally declare it that type? Or do I just have to suck it up and declare it type Animal from the get go?

Answer 1

Thank you both for the responses. I gave you both helpful ratings because I think you both answered the question, just in different ways. fredrikl, your solution certainly works well. I'm sure I have seen that notation in documentation and such but haven't had experience using it yet. Your solution works out perfectly for my method since all I am trying to do is print out array components with it. I see you said you can't add components, that makes sense since the ArrayList doesn't really know what it is, but I figure you can still modify existing things in the list, right? Didn't actually try it yet but I have been using some casts to get out various things for display and that's working fine.
morgalr, that's a complicated piece of code you have there. I don't fully understand it yet but I'll go through it again if I get this problem. From what I gather, it looks like you actually tried to solve my original problem and successfully did it?