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bonefall · 3 months

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Warrior Bites: Dietary Needs

[ID: A fish carcass, bird carcass, and mouse carcass on a stone slab.]

Are you wondering how much prey a Clan needs a day? What they should eat to stay healthy? Why food processing is useful at all? All the answers to these questions and more, contained within a general guide to dietary needs for your Warrior Cats!

As an obligate carnivore, a cat's entire diet revolves around processing meat. More specifically, the ideal diet should be 55% protein, 45% fats, about 1% to 3% carbs, with the remainder being various micro-nutrients. You can expect the average 10-pound warrior to need 350 calories per day, about 3.5 mice on average.

I've also included a section talking about obesity, which dives into how canon's depiction of it is both harmful fatphobia and wouldn't make sense from a cat perspective. It also discusses obesity in realistic cats; and how you're free to choose the realism on that aspect.

Below the cut;

Caloric Intake

Nutrition

Food Processing

On Obesity

Caloric Intake

The general rule for how much a cat needs to eat is that an active, non-neutered tom will need about 35 calories per pound of their own body weight, per day, just to remain the weight they are.

That means that the average warrior, assuming they are 10 pounds, will need 350 calories a day.

Kittens, pregnant and nursing cats, and large warriors will need to eat more than average. Neutered cats, elders, and clerics/medcats will eat less. There are calculators online for determining how much an individual will need, but you can estimate how much an entire Clan will need just by taking 350 and multiplying it by population!

Assuming the average population is about 30 cats, that's 10,500 calories to feed a Clan for a day! To put that in perspective, that many calories would feed 7 large humans. If you felt like fighting a group of angry cats to steal their day's worth of mice, I mean.

Generally speaking, land prey will have a caloric value around 5 calories per gram. Aquatic prey is significantly lower, around 4 calories per gram. Birds will be just below 6 calories per gram. To find out how many cats a piece of prey will feed, or how many pieces a cat will need that day, take the category and multiply by the prey's weight in grams.

So for example, the average house mouse is 20 grams and it is land prey, meaning its caloric value is around 100 calories! A warrior will need 3 and a half mice a day to stay healthy, and a Clan will need 105 mice daily to support 30 cats.

105 mice may seem like a lot, but remember that a wild rabbit is 1,800 grams on average which means 9,000 calories. 2 big pieces of prey will feed the whole Clan, with leftovers.

Those estimates include every part of the animal. Cats eat organs, small bones, and even skin. Skeletal muscle, or "fillets" in reference to fish, is so low in calories that it's typically somewhere between 1 kcal to 1.5 kcal per gram. That's what you're buying in the supermarket; but wild animals don't usually cut their food into choice strips.

(unless you're writing a clan that does food processing of course!)

QUICK FACTS

Average warrior will need 35 calories per pound of weight

10 pound warrior needs 350 calories a day

350 x 30 cats = 10,500 calories to feed a Clan for a single day

Birds provide the most calories per gram, land prey the middlemost, and aquatic prey the least.

Calculate calories in prey by taking the weight, converting to grams, and multiply by 4, 5, or 6 depending on broad category.

If you're having trouble feeding a Clan on small animals, look at bigger prey like rabbits and trout.

Muscle fillets are inferior to organ meats and have a much lower caloric value.

Nutrition

Not all food is the same. The more important thing to consider about any particular meal is NOT its calorie count, but its nutritional value. This is especially important to cats because protein is not stored as fat. If the body has no immediate use for it, it's flushed out.

Since cats should not eat more than 3% carbs, ALL of their fat stores will need to come from fat.

The ideal piece of meat would be at least 55% protein and 45% fat. Every individual species will have a different ratio, and more importantly, individual cuts will have a different ratio.

Skeletal muscle has a higher ratio of protein to fat. Organ meat, also sometimes called "offal," will have a more balanced ratio. That said, nearly all meat skews towards protein. PURE fat is very hard to find on the sorts of animals Clan cats hunt, and must be carefully divided, collected, or processed to make sure all warriors are getting proper nutrition.

I'll be going more in-depth with dietary fat at some other time, as this guide is meant to just be an overview! Just know that some Clans will need to eat MORE food to stay healthy because of this.

Cats need more than the "macronutrients" to stay healthy. They can't JUST rely on the juiciest cuts of meat to keep their health intact, they also need several vitamins and minerals to support their body functions, and avoid getting a deficiency.

Here's some of the important micronutrients, where to get them, and what happens they don't get enough;

Vitamin A: Livers, mealworms, eggs This is one of the most important micronutrients in a cat's body, used for practically everything. Without this, their coats will grow dull, and their joints stiff, and they'll start to go night-blind. In a severe state, they'll start to lose the ability to heal skin lacerations and die. Pregnant cats and kittens need more of this than usual, but it IS also possible to get vitamin A poisoning from getting too concentrated of a dose.

Calcium: Bones, eggs With a calcium deficiency, the warrior will feel stiff and sore, and experience painful muscle spasms. Most cats will simply crunch the bones of small prey and never have to worry about this, but if your cats cook or scavenge, they have to be told to NEVER eat the bones of a roasted bird. Because bird bones are hollow and cooking makes them brittle, they can splinter and cause fatal internal bleeding.

Thiamine: Trout, boar meat, mealworms, eggs Called a Fish Seizure because raw carp and raw bream contains thiaminase, which will destroy thiamine in the body. Lack of thiamine will cause neurological issues, such as the aforementioned seizures, general confusion, memory loss, and muscle weakness. This can be counterracted by eating trout, which is so high in thiamine that there's a theory that carp evolved it specifically to eat salmonids better.

Potassium: Trout, boar meat, mealworms, eggs As cats get older, they begin needing a lot more potassium for their bodies. It's a very common micronutrient found in most meat, but elders should get the first bite of special snacks "out of respect" which helps keep their potassium level up. Without it, they become very weak.

i feel like that evil struthiomimus from land before time with how many times i typed eggs

QUICK FACTS

The ideal ratio of a cut of meat is 55% protein 45% fat

Organ meat > Muscle meat

Micronutrients are important

But micronutrients can also cause poisoning if, somehow, they're too concentrated (very hard to come across concentrated micronutrients without the science of chemistry tho. Like if a cat swallowed a vitamin gummy.)

Food Processing

"Food Processing" is when you do something to your food before you eat it. Just a little bit of care is going to go a LONG WAY when it comes to health of the warrior.

Cats that eat raw meat the way canon warriors do are almost guaranteed to get worms. Roundworms, hookworms, and tapeworms are all passed through the infected tissue of rodent prey, and in fish, roundworms, tapeworms, and flukes can pass through raw meat.

All parasites do something a little different, but most digestive worms aren't fatal unless the cat is sick or a kitten. However, nearly ALL of them screw around with digestion, making the cat need to eat more just to stay healthy, or causing stomach irritation. Some of them can even pass in milk, infecting a suckler's nursing kits.

The easiest way to reduce this kind of infection is simply to slice the prey open from mouth-to-butt, Tigerstar-style, and hook and lift out the GI tract before eating. There's nothing in that worth eating raw anyway. It can just be discarded, or cleaned out and used to case tiny sausages! But it's only a reduction; there's still a risk of catching worms from raw meat.

There's also always the possibility of getting salmonella poisoning.

Many believe that cats are immune to this, but that's not true! Carnivores just have a shorter GI tract than omnivores and herbivores, so salmonella spends less time in their gut and ergo has less chance of causing an infection. It still happens, ESPECIALLY when cats hunt songbirds.

Nothing can be done about salmonella in raw meat, besides eating it as quickly as possible. It's innate to the bodies of birds and reptiles, and usually found on raw eggs too.

Some animals are small enough to be dried and carried around as rations, such as minnows or grasshoppers. Others could be sliced up into strips, and marinated in spices like valerian or catmint for an extra boost of energy. It could also be worthwhile to cut the pelt off a particularly soft animal, like a mole, to dry and keep as bedding material.

All of the above examples of food processing are possible without fire, but if your cats DO have fire, they will have a DRASTIC increase to the quality of their health.

Such as;

Cooking will almost completely eliminate those foodborne parasites. Their eggs don't survive extreme heat.

No more salmonella poisoning! GONE! Cooking is the only way to eliminate this!

It can increase caloric absorption from anywhere between 20% to 50%. Our example warrior who needed 3.5 mice a day could suddenly need one less mouse; and even a meager 20% drop in how much the entire Clan needs saves 2,400 calories a day. 24 whole mice!

I HAVE TO STRESS HOW BIG THAT IS. You save anywhere from 2/10 to 5/10 successful kills.

Thiaminase is destroyed by cooking, making bream and carp healthier and reducing "fish seizures."

It allows for fats to be processed and stored as tallow, lard, and oil, so it can be added to other dishes to make them both healthier and tastier.

Most food preservation requires fire in some way; by heating, jellying, boiling, etc. The only other two ways to reliably store food is by having access to a ton of salt, which is hard for most non-coastal clans to acquire, or vinegar, which is so acidic it's a notorious cat-repellent.

While cooking can also destroy some micronutrients, its benefits FAR outweigh any potential "strengths" of raw food. Destroying micronutrients is also not always a bad thing; as TOO MANY micronutrients can cause poisoning. Fire-using Clans will be more likely to "seek" micronutrients than non-fire Clans as a result, though they probably won't recognize the science behind a hankering!

QUICK FACTS

Worms. Basically unavoidable if your cat's eating like a canon warrior.

Some parasites can spread through milk.

Slicing and lifting out the GI tract can significantly reduce the chance of catching worms.

Salmonella can only be eliminated with cooking

Cooking will drastically increase the quality of a Clan's health, if your cats are advanced enough to figure out fire.

Warriors need to hunt a LOT less prey, and can store that prey, if they have fire.

Fire-using Clans will intentionally try to put more types of food in their diets and get 'cravings.'

On Obesity

Warrior Cats is not a realistic series. The boundary that any particular writer draws between humans and warrior cats is completely arbitrary. The series itself follows no sense of realistic genetics, regularly shows the cats using herbs that would poison them, and gives the characters human-centric morals like monogamy and paternal involvement.

So when it comes to being fatness in your project, please keep that in mind. You do not need too follow realistic cat weight distribution, if that's not what your project about. That said, let me tell you about humans vs cats in this department!

Humans have a massive diversity of weight distribution, with varied genetic predispositions to gaining and losing weight. The shame, bullying, and medical discrimination that comes with fatphobia is a LOT more harmful than being fat itself, and the causes of the "obesity crisis" are ridiculously more complicated than "ppl r snorking 2 much food".

Realistic cats aren't the same way.

When REAL cats are fat, that's VERY bad. It's a sign they are being fed the wrong things by humans, or live somewhere that they are able to eat what they shouldn't. They just don't have that same diversity in fat distribution that humans do. Because of how adipose tissue secretes certain hormones, feline obesity is like a chronic inflammatory disease which can cause arthritis, bladder stones, hepatic lipidosis, and more.

But with that in mind, fatness should be perceived very differently even in the most realistic settings. In comparison to humans;

It is harder for a wild cat to put on weight. Most of what they're eating is raw protein, actively trying to fill the 45% of daily fat intake they need to stay healthy. Protein isn't stored as fat, it's immediately discarded by the body if there is no use for it. A cat would need to be taking an INSANE amount of prey to start becoming dangerously overweight. Housecats are often fed human food, which has carbohydrates. Low-quality cat food will also use carbs as filler. High carb food is VERY bad for them, since they're only supposed to have 3% carbs at most. This is one of the reasons why it's easy for pet cats to become overweight.

Realistic cats don't look start looking overweight until they are significantly obese. Most of their fat is stored around their ribs and internally, unlike humans with our thick hips and round bellies, and they are covered in a naturally sagging pelt of fur. It's not as obvious with them. Visually, weight will be noticed best from a bird's eye perspective, unlike humans where it's apparent at every angle.

Putting on the fat that CAN be acquired is ridiculously important 3.5 raw, whole mice a day, per cat, are needed to fill their basic dietary requirements. There are going to be days or months especially during winter where they might be below that number, and that stored fat is going to be lifesaving. Bulking up is actually a big deal!

So not only is how canon treats overweight characters full of malice, it's full of lazy malice. It makes no sense from a realistic standpoint for wild cats to develop an association between fatness and greed or laziness. It's important, hard work for them to acquire it!

Though the Clans are notoriously xenophobic and kittypets are more likely to be overweight, it still doesn't make sense from a realistic cat perspective to be fatphobic in the same way as canon. It's more likely they'd see fat housecats as having "unearned" weight given to them by humans, like they're cheating, or they might be disdainful of how much junk food they eat, or pitiable because it's a sign of a bad twoleg... or just "sour grapes" variety jealousy ☕.

Bottom line is that there's a LOT you can do here which is better than canon's vicious bullying. The writers just lifted British cultural disdain for fat people and put it into the books. They simply did not think it through.

So please do what they didn't, and just put a little extra thought into how your project is going to view fatness! Consider if fatphobia is even a theme you need in your text.

As stated, you do not even have to write weight in your cats as being realistic in this way! I encourage you to pick and choose what's most fun and fitting for your own work. I personally give my characters a more human weight distribution, simply because I want to spite canon and be more body-positive. I am a fat people and you can take Bumble's big chunky bod from my cold, dead hands.

You can choose to make your work however you'd like, and now with this guide, you can have an easy reference for what your cats should eat! Thank you, StarClan, for this prey <3

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hentyehottie · 10 months

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chileee what is up with me & angst 😭 I was able to salvage this from my notes so I thought why not post it lol probably my first and last aot piece cause idk how to write them fr 😭 & sorry to the Reiner loves cause I wrote him so mean 😭

cw: fat shaming, fat phobia, best friend Eren, ex-boyfriend Reiner, mention of cheating, verbal abuse, mention of k!lling, friends to lovers, one sided pining, sorry if I missed anything!

Word count is undetermined but it’s not that long.

❀

Eren hasn’t said a word to you since you arrived at his apartment, puffy eyed and soaking wet from the rain, just stepped out of the way and allowed you to walk in.

You didn’t blame him, it’d been quite a while since the two of you had last spoken. Two or three weeks maybe, you couldn’t remember. It was difficult keeping track of time when your mind was slowly but surely shutting down. Either way it made you feel like shit.

You wanted to to sit and talk to him but your first priority was getting out of those wet clothes. You went straight to his bedroom, closing yourself in the en-suite.

You let the shower run for a little bit, fogging up the room and hopefully drowning out your sorrow as you sit on the covered toilet, aimlessly scrolling. You checked the notifications on your phone, tapping around until you heard your ex-boyfriend’s voice projecting from the speakers.

“Baby, just come back home. Please, let’s just talk about it.” “Hear me out, Y/N. I’m sorry okay, just come back.”

The way he was pleading you’d think he actually gave a damn about you.

“Come on Y/N,” There’s a short pause and a deep sigh. You know it’s coming. You hear the change in his tone, that false compassion and empathy has withered away. “Let’s face it, Y/N. Nobody’s gonna want you but me. Nobody’s into fat bitches. You’re lucky your face is cute. Nothing but a pretty face and a hole to fuck. Or should I say holes? I’m sure a slut like you takes it up the ass too-.”

Globs of hot tears ran down your face, budding at your chin and pooling on the screen of your phone. You deleted the nasty voice message Reiner left, only thirteen seconds into the minute and twelve second voice message, his harsh words breaking your heart all over again.

The wound was still fresh and he did nothing but cut you deeper. Why was he like that???

Blocking his number so you wouldn’t receive anymore, you were ready to be done with this shit. Ready to heal from Reiner and all the bullshit he‘s put you through.

After your eyes are cried out and your skin is parched from the piping hot water, you finally exit.

You didn’t leave with anything except your purse, phone and the clothes on your back, so you’re more than grateful to see a white tshirt and a towel on Eren’s bed waiting for you. The shirt was a little tight on your arms and the hem ended right at the cusp of your butt but it was better than nothing.

The California King in his bedroom looked freshly made, plush and inviting, but you’d spent far too many nights alone in an empty bed while your so-called partner occupied another. You should’ve known that’s how it’d be when you decided to get yourself into a domesticated situationship with a narcissistic cheater.

You opted for the couch, where Eren was also sitting. He’s munching on a bowl of cereal watching some crime documentary. The atmosphere is dull, but it’s not as bad as you thought it’d be.

“Hey!”

He didn’t bother feigning the same excitement, sending nothing but a head nod you’re way but you’re still grateful to get something out of him.

Maybe he was annoyed, which he had every right to be. It was late as hell, around three in the morning, and you honestly felt a little bad. Showing up out of the blue and forcing him to share his space.

“I really appreciate you letting me stay here, there were no rooms available anywhere.”

He ignored you, you figured he would. He hasn’t said much since you’ve been there. He’s treating you as if you’re a stranger, almost.

Unfortunately the documentary has lost all of his interest, he figured out the wife was the killer all along and there’s no reason to keep watching.

Now he’s stretching out, manspreading if you will, with his legs cocked open. He’s sporting that same bored look, except now he’s on his phone watching TikTok’s with his volume obnoxiously loud.

Honestly, he didn’t even touch this app unless he was watching the shit ton of videos you sent him at some manic hour of the night. But right now he needed something to distract him. To distract him from everything only you made him feel.

“I get paid Friday, I can send you something once it’s deposited, my money lookin kinda funny right now so...”

You’d spent close to your last getting an Uber to Eren’s. You weren’t sure why you even decided to come to Eren’s. Your parents lived in the same city and they probably would’ve been more welcoming than he was being right about now.

“When have I ever asked you to pay me back for anything y/n?”

His tone isn’t cold or mean, but indifferent. Like he doesn’t care. You’re sure he doesn’t.

The tension is almost tangible, thick and suffocating.

“I know, but-“ You cut yourself off, stumbling over your words. Your throat is scratchy and your mouth dry. You didn’t know exactly what to say to mend things between you and your bestfriend.

You hoped to pick up the pieces. Pickup where you left off like the two of y’all always did. But this here just showed how dumb and deluded you really were.

“I’m sorry…you were right.” You feel ashamed. Embarrassed even.

You can feel him staring at you, so you keep your eyes glued to your hands in your lap, twirling your thumbs in hopes to make amends.

“What are you talking about, y/n?” You can feel his gaze boring into you.

“About Reiner…and every-everything else really. We not getting back together, forreal this time, I can’t.”

He was right about everything. Reiner was an immature asshole. You trusted his smooth talking, pretty smile and it backfired horrendously.

Reiner was verbally abusive, insecure and mean, and he projected it without a care. Tore you down every chance he got, belittling you until you were almost an empty shell of your former self.

On top of that, he was insensitive as hell, bullied you worse than any of those middle and high school nobodies you no longer remembered.

He’d probably use his last breath to lie, just because. If you were blind he’d tell you the sun was blue and the sky was yellow, for no reason whatsoever other than to be a dick.

All of this Eren warned you about, but you just had to go and see for yourself. You fell for the first boy to show interest in you. The first to give you attention and affection. The first one who wasn’t looking to ‘try it out’ with a fat girl or looked at you like some pity case.

So you thought.

“You’ve said that before.”

“I know! But I mean it this time, and I’m so sorry for ghosting you and lying a-and putting him first before our friendship cause..I know you wouldn’t do that to me and I’m such an awful person-.”

Your sniffles turned into sobs, deep sobs that shook your entire body against his when he finally went against his stubborn ways and pulled you into a hug.

You sound sincere, but Eren doesn’t know if he believes you. Hell it wouldn’t be the first time you lied to him about getting back with Reiner.

He wanted to tell you off. Scold you and yell at you for abandoning him. For giving him your ass to kiss cus you thought you were in love, only to come crawling back asking him to pick up the fucking pieces, again.

“I should’ve listened to you.”

Words muffled into his chest but he heard you.

“You should’ve.” He doesn’t mean to sound condescending but it’s true. “I don’t like seeing you cry.”

His voice startled you a little bit, velvety and deep, chest rumbling as he still had you pressed up against his frame. The aloof facade cracking with each sob.

“I’ll handle it.”

He’d handle it. Handle him.

His arms embraced you tighter. One holding you against him while the other ran down your back, over your thigh then back up again as he allowed you to bawl your eyes out.

“I hate when you talk like that Ren,” You leaned back to look at him. “You know I don’t like unnecessary viole-.”

He grabs your face mid sentence, squishing your cheeks together, your lips round and pouty as you stared back at him.

“How’s it unnecessary when my princess is sitting here with tears running down her pretty ass face?”

It slipped but he made no attempt to correct it.

His princess. He’d always called you a princess, especially when y’all were younger. He found it very intriguing how spoiled you were, especially by the men in your life. Dad, uncles, even Eren himself.

He remembers saving up his little paychecks from working part time to spoil you as well, buying you little trinkets and gifts you probably didn’t even have anymore.

Nothing was unnecessary when it came to his princess. He’d die for you. Kill for you, even. You were the light of his dim life. Why wouldn’t you just realize it?

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