by TurtleNomad » 10 Jan 2012, 09:05
“Background:
In the fall, I moved to stay with some friends, while waiting for my next contract.
While unloading the car, one of them gently/jokingly commented on all the “survival” stuff, and I cheerfully pointed out that it’s “emergency” stuff and would mean that, in case of an ice storm or other disaster/emergency, we would not have to eat any of their three cats.
He smiled, and we briefly discussed prepping, with some good questions from him.
A few weeks later, one of the cats became fascinated by the original box containing a 10-pack of Mainstay rations, and I noticed his volume was roughly the same as the box.
Which got me wondering… how many calories are there in the average domestic house cat, and how many cats are equivalent to that box of Mainstays?
Here’s what I came up with, mostly from WAGs (wild-ass-guesses):
43% of cow is useable as “meat”
http://www.watersheds.org/farm/beef.htm
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_meat_is_there_on_an_average_cow&altQ=How_many_pounds_of_meat_are_there_on_one_average_cow&isLookUp=1
about one thousand calories per pound of beef
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_calo … round_beef
cats weigh about “5kg” (no good source – I’ll be weighing some cats)
Soooo, lemme-do-the-math…
0.43 * 1000 calories/lb * 5 kg/cat * 2.2 lb/kg = 4730 calories/cat
Or in other words, 1.3 Mainstay rations per cat, so my 10-case is the equivalent of about 7.6 cats.
I figure you fine folks could help me tighten up those data points!
I figure cat and beef are probably close (at least as a starting point), but don’t know.
Please provide citations, where possible.
And please weigh your cats.
Posted in members only, so Kman’s wonderful site does not become the #1 search result for the title.
Plus, dirtbag wasn’t reported to those scary PETA types, so I hope you’ll all appreciate the spirit in which this was posted. 
“
Welcome in my gang.
