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cats
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Went to gather up the laundry, but per the law of cats I suppose I will have to wait
(lemmy.blahaj.zone)
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No matter what we try he won't stop scratching the wall next to his litterbox while trying to bury his shit. The only thing that works is physically blocking him from scratching the wall, but the only thing I can think to put between his box and the wall is a shoerack, which I would really like to be able to use without the risk of shoes falling into his litter. We're in a small apartment so working with very limited space and can't just have it pulled away from the wall. Just wondering if anyone has any ideas on what to replace the shoe rack with
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My kitten, Mouse Police, likes to sit on the fridge. She is very graceful and seldomly knocks down anything. She watches the other cats from up there.
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This is at the Hemingway house. The placard says “keep off of furniture” (paraphrased) and the cat says “naw, dogg”
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She is definitely more important than the crossword puzzle in progress!
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It's not all bad I guess.
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cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/30405690
Hello! I realize the title sounds a bit clickbaity, but it's not hyperbole.
The short explanation is the nutritional facts on pet food includes its water weight, which makes the other percents like protein and fat on the packaging effectively pointless and impossible to compare from one product to the next, and they almost never include the ash and carbohydrate content. What you need is the dry matter basis, which is the percent breakdown excluding the water.
So what to do?
Well if you want a simple answer, just use https://catfooddb.com/ which has already done most of the leg work for you. Go find your preferred brand and check out the foods you're already feeding and pay attention to the pie charts to see how much protein, fat, and carbohydrates there are in the food you're currently using.
Is your food not list? Don't fret!
If you are taking your pet food choices seriously, you can repeat her findings (often more accurately due to finding newer and more accurate data) on your own by figuring out the most current dry matter basis values for the particular food you’re looking at.
The math behind calculating dry matter basis
https://endocrinevet.blogspot.com/2014/01/how-to-calculate-carbohydrate-and.html
An online dry matter basis calculator
The catch is unless you know the exact ash content, which is almost never listed on the packaging sold to consumers, you have to guess, which greatly distorts the total carbohydrates. The best way I have found to get the exact ash content it to just go to chewy.com (not an endorsement. I use them strictly to get at information not disclosed to consumers) and look at the consumer questions because someone has likely already asked and use that value, or ask the question yourself and chewy will respond within a day or two.
So what do these values even mean?
At the end of the day these dry matter basis values are completely arbitrary unless you have something to compare them against, I recommend looking at data sheets put together by zoos where they have identified the dry matter basis of various prey species for use in feeding at zoos.
https://www.rodentpro.com/informationcenter/resources/nutrient-composition-of-whole-vertebrate-prey
I am just a regular consumer like you, but my take on the subject is you want (in dry matter basis) a breakdown of something like 66-75% protein, 25-33% fat, and as little ash and carbs as you can get. Wet foods typically don’t have much ash while dry foods have a lot more. For the record, ash is the amount of bones burned into ash during the manufacturing process 💀. Cats are obligate carnivores so they should have zero carbohydrates.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
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