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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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nburkhardt · 2 months

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Clingy Honeyboy

Quick information I don’t want to fully explain: it’s an au of season 4. Steve and Eddie got together while Steve was working at Scoops. The UD isn’t around anymore either.

cw: omegaverse, mpreg (omega Steve & alpha Eddie)

Onto the fic ✨

There’s something up with Steve.

Eddie loves him, like, wants to mate with him kind of love. Is sorta obsessed with him actually. Already half way living together and has family weekly meals with Wayne kinda love. Clings to each other, spends as much time as possible together type of love. Ya know?

And that’s how he knows there’s something up because Steve’s been extra, extra clingy.

So clingy that his best friends officially found out about their relationship, because Steve was glued to his back during band practice one day. (He had to answer many questions that day- with a purring very content Steve leaned against him not even bothering to help, the jerk!)

Look, he’s not complaining. Eddie loves his clingy omega very much, thank you. He’s worried, this is a new level of clingy for his sweet baby.

It’s just…leaning into a concerning amount of clinginess. To the point that he’s skipped days of school and spent it in their nest or in the backroom of Family Video. Steve heavily scents him on the days they do manage to be apart. He’s almost out of clothes because they keep getting stolen!

“Alright, okay. Stevie, Sunshine, Light of my life. What is going on?” Eddie sits up in their nest, watching as Steve stops his hands from continuing fixing the edge of the nest, “Honey?”

Steve shifts to sit back down, confusion all over his beautiful face. “What do you mean, Eds?”

“You’ve been extra clingy, stealing a lot of my shirts. You’re fixing the nest for the tenth time this week and it’s only Tuesday. I’m starting to get concerned, are you feeling okay?”

Eddie reaches over and grabs his hands, squeezing lightly before tugging him closer. Steve goes along and rests his forehead against his shoulder, “I just, I have this need to be with you and- and the nest feels wrong, okay?”

“Wrong? But it’s our nest, has been for a while now?”

Steve lets out a huff, “I know! But it’s, there’s- maybe. It needs more, I don’t know.” there’s tears coming up and Eddie is quick to pull him into a hug, “Doctors appointment?”

“Doctors appointment.”

The day he found the courage to just talk to Eddie, Steve was a little sleep deprived. (Give him a break, it was just after the whole- mall fire, okay?!) It felt out of body, but so amazing, because the alpha said yes to a date.

Right now, right here, he feels that same- giddiness. Feels on cloud nine, his heart is beating so fast and his scent is blooming his joy.

“Congratulations, is the right word, then?” The doctor smiles at them, then while the doctor talks a bit more, Steve blanks it out.

In a few blinks, he’s settled on their couch at home and Eddie is strumming his acoustic guitar. Their combined joyful scents are filling his nose and making him feel warm and happy. They stay like that until Wayne gets home, telling him the news immediately.

Because one, they live together and two, it’s Wayne. Of course he gets to know immediately.

Steve is so happy the days following that everyone gets to smell his cinnamon and the new subtle vanilla scent from his pregnancy. His joy is contagious, everyone they run into ends up feeling just as happy as Steve.

It was only a matter of time for Steve’s found family pack to notice and question the sudden mood change.

(It took Robin a day of working together to piece it together, she knew of their relationship of course, she’s Robin. She freaked, rambled and cried happy tears for him. The front room of Family Video was full of cinnamon and apples from their combined scents.)

Eddie’s busy reworking notes and rereading all his papers, leaning over the table and ignoring the others around him. He’s too wrapped in it that he doesn’t hear or see the door open, until a very familiar scent pops up next to him that immediately gets his attention.

Standing there with a pout already on his face, his arms crossed in the jacket Eddie was wearing last night, is his Stevie. His scent doesn’t give off actual distress or discomfort, so Eddie isn’t panicking yet. Instead he flips his papers over and turns completely to face his Sweetheart.

Around them Eddie can hear how silent it gets as Steve climbs into his lap and immediately scenting him. Eddie’s arms automatically wrap around him and breathes in his favorite scent.

As he opens his eyes, there’s the newest sheep, Steve’s adopted pups, looking at them with wide eyes and mouths wide open. Dustin front and center, an arm up pointing at them looking like a cartoon character.

It’s as Steve’s pur starts up and he fully sinking into Eddie getting comfortable, that the room explodes with questions. At least from the pups- his best friends already know how clingy Steve’s been for weeks now.

“What the hell is this?”

Eddie shifts against the chair and looks over at them, “Honeyboy is clingy.”

It absolutely does not answer the question and if anything, it looks to have annoyed Wheeler- and confuses Henderson even more.

“Honeyboy? How do you two even know each other?! Is he asleep right now?” Dustin’s eyes can’t get any bigger as Eddie watches the wheels turn in his head.

“yes, Honeyboy. Or Sunshine, Baby, Sweetheart, Babydoll, annnnd Stevie.” Eddie smiles as he lists each name, knowing he has even more. “We live in a small town, of course I know him. And yes, he is asleep right now so why don’t you be quiet and not wake my Honey?”

Henderson looks about ready to explode and it would be funny to keep him and the others from getting any more information, but luckily, Eddie’s willing to ignore the little devil on his shoulder today.

“Stevie and I are together, he’s extra clingy right now. Ya happy?”

The boys all look at each other with wide eyes before deciding to whisper to each other and Dustin turns back around and as he starts to speak, Steve shifts against him and Eddie can feel his smile as he moves.

“Teddy forgot one important detail, I’m also pregnant.”

I think if I continue writing, it’d just be more of Steve being clingy and a little shit towards Dustin. So we’re ending it there :)

I was at work the other day and all I could think about was a clingy Steve and how funny if that’s how people find out about their relationship haha. Then i decided I needed this to be just a straight up season 4 au, where the upside down doesn’t effect them anymore bc I didn’t want the hurt/comfort, I just wanted happy and sappy.

@puppy-steve (I saw that comment on the WIP I posted a few days ago ❤️)

Permanent Taglist: please let me know if you don’t want to be included when I post with mpreg.

@mysticcrownshipper @artiststarme @thereindeerlady @justforthedead89 @ronniescontinuum @freyaforestafay @littlewildflowerkitten @gregre369 @zerokrox-blog @flustratedcas @carlprocastinator1000 @marvelmwah @navnae @i-less-than-three-you @grimmfitzz @estrellami-1 @cartercaptainofthemoon @bookworm0690

#steddie #omegaverse #mpreg #omega steve harrington #alpha eddie munson #stranger things #steddie omegaverse #nburkhardt works #I need everyone to know that Dustin absolutely freaks out about his two favorite guys being together #and that eventually they have a little boy who’s just as clingy as Steve :)#cw mpreg #tw mpreg #cw omegaverse

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