I recently lost a very precious family member and I am having a tough time coping. Is there a Lemmy-equivalent community for Pet Loss? I've done a fair amount of searching but haven't found anything active or similar. Apologies if this has been asked for the hundredth time.

cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/16318147

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I put a tea light near him and he striked a pose

Hi, every morning I have breakfast with unsweetened soy milk. My cats kill me if they can't empty my bowl, but because I add stuff like raisins which include sugar, I give them some plain soy milk instead. The vet said it's "probably fine", but I want to know for certain. Does anyone know for certain soy milk is or isn't bad for cats? Thanks!

cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/16244242

I can't believe how much she has grown in the last 6 months! She's the sweetest little thing you can imagine, and such a little princess. She never bites or scratches people, even if she is getting fed up with me clipping her nails. If she isn't playing with Boudica then she is cuddled up on my lap or chest purring away. Both kitties purr as soon as someone starts to pet them, but Nini has such a squeaky purr that makes her sound like a squirrel. It's been a great 6 months (aside from her nibbling on everything in my pantry when i leave) and I'm excited for the next 6

English/German as always.

In the two weeks she was here Indira has not learned to trust me. While she isn't afraid of my cat Miez anymore, she still hisses at me when I get too close for her comfort and runs away. Although she seems to be a totally cuddly cat, I'm not allowed to pet her directly. When the lady visited, she was allowed to per her almost instantly. It seems we just didn't "click", so I'm happy a very nice family will take her in.

Morgen wird meine Pflegekatze Indira in ihr neues Zuhause kommen, also habt hier eine Minute Schnurren von ihr

In den letzten zwo Wochen hat Indira nicht gelernt mir zu vertrauen. Meiner Miez gegenüber verhält sie sich nicht mehr ängstlich, aber sobald ich ihr zu nahe komme faucht sie und/oder rennt davon. Obwohl sie offenbar eine totale Schusekatze ist, darf ich sie immer noch nicht direkt streicheln. Als die Dame zu Besuch kam durfte sie Indira fast sofort direkt streicheln. Es schein einfach zwischen uns nicht zu funken, daher bin ich glücklich eine sehr nette Familie für Indira gefunden zu haben.

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 listed? 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

https://balance.it/convert

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

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/NUTRIENT-COMPOSITION-OF-WHOLE-VERTEBRATE-PREY-FISH)-Dierenfeld-Alcorn/9119b1ba4e298635227d69da95636d920eb4b6e9

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.

This cute furry gremlins name is Alastor and if you can believe it my face only got one scratch!

No traps here. Noki is always up for some belly rubs and it's never a claw trap🤷🏼‍♂️

Black and white cat looks out the handle hole of a fruit box that has a "handle with care" sticker.