✧✦Catherine✦✧
did you know that cats (despite being obligate carnivores mainly interested in meat) can digest, for example, potato puree just fine?
Apr 3 at 9:36pmWeb
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 3

i don't think most cats are very interested in potato puree but.

i can order ATP (pharmaceutical grade) at only €250/gram from sigma-eldritch. this is (historically speaking) nowhere near how expensive spices were, anyway.

do you think cats would eat ATP-seasoned potato puree?

Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 3
this is actually pretty easy to test but i'll have to either downgrade to alibaba or file documents for an LLC first
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 3

come to think of it, i've never tasted ATP before. i wonder if i could taste ATP. i wonder what it tastes like

i don't have the right taste receptors to do it properly but i'd absolutely lick pure ATP powder

Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 3
do you think atp would taste well dissolved in white monster
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 3
it's gotta be an adenosine receptor agonist, right? like other xanthine drugs? hmm but the biological lifetime is probably too low to feel it, especially on a background of energy drink amounts of caffeine...
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 3
the minimal alibaba order is 1 kg of ATP and i might just do it for the funsies
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 3

nevermind that, for some deranged reason people consume it as a supplement

i swear, the supplement industry is lukewarm to actively dangerous to its intended customers but it's an endless goldmine of chemical sourcing for its unintended ones

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Capsules-Adenosine-Triphosphate-Disodium-Friendly/dp/B0DQ624W71

ATP Capsules | 200mg Adenosine Triphosphate Disodium | 60 Capsules | Vegan Friendly UK Made | 1 Capsule Daily | 2 Months Supply : Amazon.co.uk: Health & Personal Care

ATP Capsules | 200mg Adenosine Triphosphate Disodium | 60 Capsules | Vegan Friendly UK Made | 1 Capsule Daily | 2 Months Supply : Amazon.co.uk: Health & Personal Care

Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 3
oh, apparently i do have receptors that are properly sensitive to ATP, it's the umami ones (the paper describes reactivity to IMP but it works the same with AMP or ATP, i believe)
Show threadValdusApr 3
@whitequark Regarding taste receptors, I'm not sure why you want to give a cat ATP specifically in the first place. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10468298/
According to this paper a mix of amino acid salts would be most appealing. (Or just put a can of tuna in the mashed potatoes.)
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Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 3
@Valdus I recall reading something about cats having a particular taste for nucleoside phosphates, but maybe that was outdated or wrong?
Show threadValdusApr 3
@whitequark
Well to be fair I don't understand chemistry well enough to fully understand the paper, so maybe they really do go wild for it.
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 3
@Valdus it was supposedly a particularly potent attractor since it's present in high concentrations in muscle. but from skimming the abstract it sounds like cat taste receptors work sorta like my taste receptors, which is interesting if true
Show threadValdusApr 3
@whitequark well they're still mammalian umami taste receptors, but they note that they respond to different amino acids than better studied human and mouse receptors, but also humans only respond to glutamate while cats respond to several amino acids, so I reckon if a human can taste ATP so can a cat
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 3
@Valdus yeah I actually now remember reading research on this in the past and planning to buy some IMP for this exact reason (to do taste testing on)
Show threadcrzwdjk ✅ Apr 4
@whitequark Cats would love umami flavors, honestly even salt can convince them to eat things that aren't meat. I don't recall feeding my cat potatoes but at one point he quite liked a snack of canned peas, but only as long as they weren't the "low sodium" variety. He also sometimes eats cooked beans, I think also because it's a pleasant mix of salt and protein.
Show threadchaos ΘΔ& (it/he)Apr 3
@whitequark so true
we're always surprised when we are like ah fuck how are we gonna get hold of something without a MOQ of 1kg
but then, the supplements industry:
tho even then some stuff is still ludicrously expensive outside of pre-filled with way too much filler large capsules that we'd have to process out
Show threadchaos ΘΔ& (it/he)Apr 3
@whitequark at least ordering from china directly we get some sort of documentation to go with it unlike the supplements industry
sometimes the bodybuilder&co pharma companies are surprisingly open with their documents which is nice though, some even provide a trail going back to which batch from which supplier it was
Show threadchaos ΘΔ& (it/he)Apr 3
@whitequark chaos when its substance comes with a substance bill of materials:
yippee!
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 3
@chaos i mean it costs $80/kg, i can afford that easily. i just don't wanna store 1 kg of ATP around
Show threadchaos ΘΔ& (it/he)Apr 3
@whitequark mood, it'd be so much worth it for some things but without somewhere for long term storage yeah nah as much as we wanna run chaos compounding pharmacy, arthritis makes separating/filling capsules hard without entities around to help us
dreading having to order 10g of clascoterone again, it lasts us a while but last we ordered it for even a sample quantity it was still decently expensive with shipping, and got double charged VAT by customs, hope it gets marketed for use outside of USA sometime
really should just order 1-5kg of magnesium bisglycinate at some point, it's worth the space it takes up at least


Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 3
@chaos you could get a capsule filling machine, even proper ones with SS316 construction are cheap these days
Show threadchaos ΘΔ& (it/he)Apr 3
@whitequark we have a plastic tray style thing that kinda sucks but it still requires separating the capsules into tops and bottoms which is hell for our fingers and wrists, i can manage one batch of 100 pills maybe once or twice a month, which ain't enough for magnesium, and it's still i think size 2 instead of size 4, i'd rather take a massive handful of tiny capsules than huge anti(retro)viral/biotic capsules or huge fish oil gelcaps (tho did find small vegan altetnative ones for recently, shame they cost 20x the cost of the raws lmao)
plus even then i'm still ocd enough to manually weigh each capsule for QA
a pill press would be a lot better but those are somehow illegal here
should probably look into something like that as our meds costs is starting to look like the dril candles tweet with how much supplements companies here are ramping up prices even tho materials and labor still cost the same
Show threadchaos ΘΔ& (it/he)Apr 3
@whitequark if you have any recommendations then feel free to link us
keywords and sites are also good, we are extremely bad at figuring out keywords for things
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 3
@chaos don't have anything bookmarked, just know that when i looked into it 5 years ago they got affordable
Show threaddatenwolfApr 3

@whitequark @chaos

Now I'm curious if ATP could have similar applications as caffeine has in dye laser fluorophore chemistry.

https://doi.org/10.3390/ma12172692

Show threadAda Worcester 🏳️‍⚧️Apr 3
@whitequark i really do love how you can sell so many drugs just fine, fuck the regulator, so long as you call them a supplement
sometimes it's fine! sometimes it's bleeding insane! sometimes i wonder if you could sell estrogen as a supplement so long as you made sure to use a novel salt rather than one currently approved as a medication
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 3
@pikhq estradiol... doesn't form salts
Show threadAda Worcester 🏳️‍⚧️Apr 3
@whitequark then what the hell are the -- oh those are esters not salts, that's an entirely different thing. whoops.
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 3
@pikhq yep. also the answer is "it depends" but in most countries i think nothing stops you from selling most estrogens as long as you don't advertise them as being for humans
Show threadchaos ΘΔ& (it/he)Apr 3
@whitequark @pikhq critter hrt for nonhumans
Show threadartemistApr 3
@pikhq @whitequark in DE it's legal to sell LSD or MDMA analogues as long as they're "not for human consumption"
Show threadRhoApr 3
@artemist @pikhq @whitequark how much MDMA does one give to a horse?!!
Show threadartemistApr 3
@pikhq @whitequark (actually have no idea whether anyone actually bothers to sell their supplements legally in the eu, i thought they'd require a pre-market authorization under the novel foods directive)
Show threadgroff 🇺🇦Apr 3
@whitequark Supplement industry is wild.
https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/2026/feb/05/injectable-peptides-trend
‘People are turning themselves into lab rats’: the injectable peptides craze sweeping the US

Though lab-made peptides are touted as a cure-all, they are not FDA-regulated and pose serious risks, experts warn

The Guardian
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 3
@geoffl hey, i was interested in peptides before it was cool!
Show threadgroff 🇺🇦Apr 3
@whitequark
I will not order amphibian opioid heptapeptides from dubious chemical suppliers.
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 3
@geoffl yes, like, I have a clue which is why I don't inject myself with random peptides of unclear provenance. I was just interested in them :p
Show threadZack WeinbergApr 3
@whitequark that's gotta be the same as eating adenosine and, idk, sodium phosphate, right? There's no way the high energy phosphate bonds survive digestion even long enough to make it to the liver, let alone the rest of the body...
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 3
@zwol oh yes the biological lifetime of ATP is measured in seconds at most
Show threadFxChiPApr 3
@whitequark this plus the previous post just sound like preludes to _disaster_
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 3
@fxchip how so
Show threadFxChiPApr 4

@whitequark My reasoning was simply:

1. "Let me lick this pure powder 'sight unseen'" is more likely than not to end in tears
2. "Let me use this powder whose flavor I'm not sure of yet in an energy drink that might clash violently with it" seemed like doubling down on #1 in a way

Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 4
@fxchip well I know it's safe for use in humans in multiple-hundred-milligram amounts so it's not likely to meaningfully harm me unless I do something very stupid. (more stupid than this)
Show threadFxChiPApr 4
@whitequark well, true. but it doesn't need to be harmful to health to be harmful to taste buds and cause tears anyway :D
Show threadAled;cdApr 3
@whitequark leave out a bowl of beef with a little potato atp seasoning and then slowly change the ratio of beef to potato until its all potato
Show threadKarl Heinz HäsliprinzApr 3
@whitequark add butter, then yes - at least my cat would have.
Show threadSo many dynamosApr 3
@whitequark Does not seem 100% safe
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10562110/
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Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 3
@Zerofactorial i would make sure to not get heart surgery in the meantime :D
Show threadWilliam D. JonesApr 3
@whitequark Cat I Petsat (RIP) didn't get the Obligate Carnivore Memo. She would happily paw broccoli from my plate and eat it.
Show threadSalty SiryusApr 3
@whitequark Our cat loves the soft inner part of bread rolls, so we pick that part out and give it to her. It's part of our breakfast ritual now heh
Show threadSnoopJApr 3
@whitequark [pointing at metabolic process, talking to cat] "where did you get that?"
Show threadAled;cdApr 3
@SnoopJ @whitequark i've always thought it was a little suspicious that we can digest fungi given how small a fraction of our diet they make up...
Show threadSnoopJApr 3

@ldcd @whitequark I assume the taxonomy here goes to "okay well, so we'll start with a tube…" since you end up back at in the end

I don't know the taxonomy of felines but presumably "obligate" came later? Shouldn't guess, but.

Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 3
@SnoopJ @ldcd the cat is a series of tubes
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 3
@SnoopJ @ldcd well actually most of the tubes are somewhat in parallel
Show threadSnoopJApr 3
@whitequark @ldcd "I just the other day got… a [Carbohydrate] was sent by my [Cat] at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday. I got it Yesterday [Tuesday]. Why? Because it got all tangled up with all these things going on the [Cat] commercnyally.… And again, the [Cat] is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes."
Show threadWillApr 4
@SnoopJ @ldcd @whitequark This is *probably* not the answer, but I recall my mind being blown a few years ago by a random aside in some random article about cats that said something like "cats do not require significant carbohydrates in their diet, since they normally only consume the amounts that are *in the guts of their prey*". So: because they eat their prey whole, they *do* normally consume small amounts of plant matter, and I guess they might as well be able to digest their prey's lunch.
Show threadKing Naga Calyo Lucere-DelphiApr 3
@whitequark I can believe that, but I can also believe that it would be critically deficient in nutrients a cat needs that can only be taken in by meat, and should not be the only thing you feed a cat. :x
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 3
@dragonarchitect obviously, yes, they're obligate carnivores for very good reason