How much phosphorus is in a mouse? ROFL

Jack has CRF, he was diagnosed a few months ago, but he is doing pretty well now, Sub-qs every other day, pepcid at night, some B vitamins, some phosphorus binder and some baking soda. Hes actually doing really well. I got a lot of help from the yahoo group, fwiw.

Well spring is showing up here (we still have a couple months of winter though) and the snow has melted away from many of the bushed on our lot, Jack has caught 5 mice in the last 3 days, which is less than he normally catches in the summer (averages 2 a day), but I'm not sure how much phosphorus binder to give him for each mouse he eats

Ok, thats more of a joke than anything, if his phosphorus goes up notably on his next blood work I'll ask the vet how I should go about the phos binder .

At this point I want him to eat as much as possible so I'm not going to take the mice away.

Here he is lounging in the sun on his favorite window sill,

Your funny.
He looks pretty good.
Coco gets her blood tsts next month.
I hope Jack keeps doing well.

On a more serious note, I wonder whether/not, had his lifelong diet been mouse et al, he would be dealing with CRF today..........

If you're serious about the phosphous content, take it to the Yahoo group,

1.60% Phosporus give or take.

http://www.nal.usda.gov/awic/zoo/Who...nal02May29.pdf

Originally Posted by BLAISE

On a more serious note, I wonder whether/not, had his lifelong diet been mouse et al, he would be dealing with CRF today..........

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Do you mean that if he was not an indoor/outdoor cat eating mice he might not have CRF?

I suppose that a possibility, but I know of a couple in/out cats around here that lived to ~20, one of them put jack to shame in the mousing department, 5-6 a day in the summer, Garf was BIG and kinda fat, and he hardly ate any of his cat food in the summer. In the winter its pretty tough to find mice around here with all the snow so he would eat cat food then...

%1.6 is kinda high, I haven't read through that link yet, but it seems like that is referring to the mouse as a whole, including fur, which Jack doesn't eat (or the head of the intestines).

I follow Dr. Nagode's (Calcitriol researcher at OSU) advice where phosphorus binders are concerned. http://members.verizon.net/~vze2r6qt...s.htm#drnagode I also believe it is better to err on the side of caution, and give more phosphorus binder, than to give too little, and allow the serum phosphorus levels to rise. From everything I've read on the subject, controlling serum phosphorus levels appears to be the single best way to slow the progression of the disease (of course, this is just my opinion.) The best way to stay on top of phosphorus levels (that may, indeed, fluctuate with the addition of mice to the diet) is to continue to do bloodwork at regular intervals, and treat accordingly. Not much help, I know! For what it's worth, I use phosphorus binders in everything except Hills k/d canned and Purina NF canned.

Originally Posted by jackbombay

%1.6 is kinda high, I haven't read through that link yet, but it seems like that is referring to the mouse as a whole, including fur, which Jack doesn't eat (or the head of the intestines).

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Ooops. That was the calcium %, the phosphorus is actually higher than that.

1.72% for an adult mouse, and yes it is for whole prey on a dry matter basis.

(the link has a few pages with all the nutritional content for whole vertebrate prey.... I use it for my snakes.... definately a good link for raw feeders too, it has mice, rats, quail, etc.)

Every cat wants to catch the mice and kill them. But I don't think that mice are the food that cats like to eat. They only want to play with them because that is their favourite thing. I also have a cat, but I don't let them catch mice , they are very dirty.

Originally Posted by que_sera_sera

But I don't think that mice are the food that cats like to eat.

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There is no food that Jack would rather eat, but our other cat has no interest in mice, fwiw.

Yeah, my mom's indoor-outdoor cats love to eat mice. And baby rabbits and ground squirrels. The male eats more of the prey than the female does....she prefers to just play with them, and when they're dead she lets him eat the prey. He was fed dog food in his last home, but because he caught small mammals, too, he's still healthy and hasn't suffered any ill effects from the dog food. And his teeth are nice and clean, even at age 12!