Advice needed - food/remission

Hi all,

Happy New Year!

Not sure if anyone remembers me - I posted before Christmas when my cat amazingly went into diabetes remission after 3 weeks on insulin.

Well I have continued to test (in fact I've gone a bit mad and have a spreadsheet with water intake, regular BG, urine, poo notes etc) and he is still fantastically in remission and doing well ... except ...

I've noticed a wee bit of blood in his poos, which are a bit soft these days. A trip to the vet and she checked him out and said it was possibly his new Applaws wet food diet. She said it might be a bit rich for him (he used to be on Burns dry food pre-diabetes) and to try perhaps some dry food again and monitor for diabetes. She gave me some Royal Canin Sensitivty control wet pouches to try too.

Well I am completely against introducing anything high carb that might bring on his diabetes again. So before I do a minefield of research i wondered if anyone here had any advice? Any good dry food that might firm up his poos a bit and give his bowels a rest without endangering the remission?

I'm in the UK. I'll take a look at the food boards now, but posted just in case anyone else had any experience of this too.

Elaine x

 

Hi Elaine!

Lovely to hear from you. But sorry to hear that your boy is having poo problems...

Sadly, I don't know of any dry food in the UK that is very low carb. Some are lower carbs than others but they are still, I'm pretty sure, going to be too high in carbs for a diabetic.... And especially for one in remission....

But maybe it's worth trying a different wet food? Or a different flavour of the same food? Some cats are sensitive to - or intolerant of - certain proteins (beef is quite a common one). Some cats with senstive tums do better on raw food.

If you buy online there are quite a few foods available that you can't find in the shops. Quite a few people buy online at Zooplus (great range, good prices, slightly dodgy packaging); and some of us who are a bit obsessive about cat food buy online from Germany too (they really know how to make cat food over there! :lol: )

If you're buying in a Supermarket then I know that others buy these brands for their diabetic cats:
Felix and Whiskas in jelly,
Butchers classic,
Sheba tender terrine with beef/salmon
Sheba 'Adult' with beef/cod in jelly
Toplife chicken dinner (tetrapack) from Asda
Lily's Kitchen

From Zooplus you can also get Bozita canned food and Grau 'grain 'free'

Here is an online cat food values calculator so you can work out the % of calories from carbs of any food you're considering. (For a diabetic cat you're looking for less than 10%, and the lower the better. Some cats are more carb-sensitive than others).
http://fnae.org/carbcalorie.html

Eliz x

 

Hi Eliz - thanks for getting back to me - hope all is well with you

Thanks so much for all this info! That website is great for checking the carb levels etc.! I used it to see the Royal Canin stuff she gave me - it's 5.8% versus the 0.5% of the Applaws. It also has more calories and less protein. It's also SUPER expensive!

i think it's still OK though diabetes-wise so I'll do a half/half mix of the two to see if that simmers things down a bit as I have 6 pouches to use up. However I'm not happy with it as a long term solution so in the meantime I'm going to get hold of some other things online - perhaps that Bozita. I'm too scared to give him anything dry tbh so will see if I can sort this out using different wet foods.

Thanks again - you're so helpful!!

Elaine x

 

Hi Elaine,

If you fancy trying Bozita cans I can send you a couple to try to save you the bother of ordering something that your cat won't eat. Bozita actually make 2 types of food, canned and tetrapacks. The cans (higher protein content) are only available from Zooplus, I think; but the tetrapacks (lower protein and more jelly) are available in some pet food stores. I think the 'Toplife' chicken dinner tetrapack from Asda is actually made by the Bozita people. The canned food is a 'pate' type. The tetrapacks are chunks in jelly, I think. There is a UK person who was posting here fairly recently (also with a cat in remission) who I think feeds her cat the tetrapacks.

I can also send you some Grau 'grain free' if you like. I have some little tins that I bought to 'experiment' with (I'm something of an 'anorak' when it comes to cat food. But, hey, everyone needs a hobby... :lol: ). If your cat likes that then it's possible to get some of the flavours in huge 800gram cans. (The small cans would be very pricey to use longterm but the 800gram cans are about half the price per kg) The big cans are certainly...well...'big'...but some people divide the food up into portions (or put into ice cube trays) and freeze it to include in a rotation later on to minimise wastage.

If you want me to send you some cans to try just PM me your address. :smile:

 

Elaine,
I noticed this thread on another forum this morning and thought it might interest you. It's about a kitty that has - what seems like - a similar problem to your kitty (though isn't diabetic); and about people's experience that pureed pumpkin can help to settle the GI tract.

http://www.petforums.co.uk/cat-health-nutrition/283265-bsh-sensitive-tum.html

 

I have read that aloe vera juice may help digestive upsets, too.

If you make 1 change at a time, then you'll narrow down what seems to improve his condition.

 

Very interesting! We saw an applaws tin with pumpkin and thought that was weird and left that flavour! Might pick some up then! Going to go with 1/2 applaws wet, 1/2 royal canin sensitive wet for now. Inspect the poos and cross my fingers!

 

Oh, Elaine, I've just thought of something... (Duh! Sometimes it takes my old brain a little while to do that...)

Isn't 'Applaws' a complementary cat food.....? If that's the case then my understanding about compelementary foods is that they shouldn't comprise more than 20% of the diet (ie, one meal out of five....)

Maybe the problem isn't just that the food is too rich but that is doesn't contain all the essential nutrients that your cat needs...?

Edited to add; Just looked at Applaws info online and from what I can see it is a complementary food, but quite a few people have been caught out on this because the fact that it isn't a complete food isn't obvious from a quick reading of the label.

From the Zooplus website:
"Feeding Recommendation:
Please note: Applaws is a complementary food. Since Applaws is a natural product, it may have an unbalanced calcium/phosphorus ratio with an above-average phosphorus content. Thus Applaws should be complemented with a well-balanced complete food (moist or dry)."


Will PM you about this in case you don't see this post.

 

Applaws has several different cat foods listed on the UK web site: http://www.applaws.co.uk/our_products.php

The cat tins, pouches, cat pates ,and cat pots are supplement only foods. They also contain rice so they're likely not diabetic-friendly.

The cat treats are 100% freeze dried meat, liver, or fish so they are diabetic-friendly :smile: The cat tuna loins aslo are diabetic-friendly.