I'm not so sure this diabetes is type 2? What if it is type 1 them it can't be controlled with food right?
Why are you thinking it might be 1ype 1 diabetes? Frankly, type 1 is very uncommon in cats; I'd say it's way more likely that Hitch's is type 2.
I remember Sue telling me to give Riley small meals to get the pancreas working is that true for Hitch or is it different?
There are people who feed their diabetic kitties several small meals a day; others who only feed 2 bigger meals (at AMPS/PMPS) and feed in between only when they need to steer up a too-low BG # somewhere in the cycle.
Some people think that feeding several small meals a day helps give the pancreas more time to heal. And there are some cats, perhaps because they were accustomed to grazing/free-feeding on dry kibble all day before their diabetes diagnosis, who might fare better getting several meals per day; maybe those cats would stress out more at feeling "deprived" by only having their meals at AMPS/PMPS time, right before they get a dose of insulin.
And for people without the luxury of being able to stay home all the time (because of the work week or whatever), using a timed feeder and mini-meals during the 12-hour cycle can provide them some added "insurance" against too-low BG numbers that may occur when they're not around to monitor.\
Every cat is different, and every cat guardian has a different opinion on
how to feed a diabetic cat, even though we agree across the board that low-carb foods are best for diabetic kitties.
As for my the choices I made on when to feed my Bat-Bat and why I did it that way: Not working outside the home, I'm able to monitor her all the time.
And I feel pretty strongly that - at least at the start of treatment - it's important to be able to see
how your cat processes the insulin through the 12-hour cycles. So I feel that feeding mini-meals, when you're still not certain of when your cat's nadir time occurs, tends to muddy the waters in terms of "seeing" your cat's unique metabolic patterns in the spreadsheet. Once you have a good idea of when your cat hits his lowest point during the cycle, I don't think it's that bid a deal if you choose to feed, say, 4 times a day.
But ... I have my own little theory about the way my
own cat ended up a diabetic, and I think this is a fairly common story: She was allowed to free-feed on mainly dry kibble for the first 9 years of her life, getting only a very small amount of canned (and I obviously wasn't paying any attention to carb levels because no vet
ever told me to do that
). In early 2009, she got a really bad UTI, and one of the Hill's "prescription" foods she was given for that was chock-FULL of corn meal. She put on quite a bit of weight then; in fact, I was so alarmed by it that I finally called the vet's office & asked if I could take her off that stuff! Then I went back to free-feeding what I
believed was "healthy" grain-free, salmon-based organic dry kibble.
banghead
The weight didn't come off.
I started cutting back on the
amount of kibble available to her throughout the day; I bought a special type of food bowl to help slow down her eating; I bought a little "kibble ball" that she could bat around to get the food out of and get some more exercise at the same time. (By this time, she weighed 18+ lbs!) We had to do some traveling in 2013, and she suddenly started losing weight. I mistakenly thought it was a combination of my having "put her on a diet" and our travels that resulted in the rapid weight loss; but it wasn't: It was feline diabetes, and she was literally wasting away at that point!
So what's my point here? I think many of us (historically) overfeed our cats by allowing them to graze on dry foods, and the weight gain creeps up on us before we even think much about it and before long - bam! - they are drinking and peeing buckets, and
then we find out one day that our beloved cats are diabetics.
Where Bat-Bat's history is concerned, I think the food (kibble)
and the manner in which I fed her - letting her graze at will, all day/night long - actually
helped her pancreas grow lazy and shut down. Being constantly bombarded by carbs, I think her pancreas finally just ... gave up the ghost! So when she was diagnosed, I transitioned her to all low-carb canned exclusively, and she was fed only two meals per day - at AMPS & PMPS, before her insulin doses. Except for the times that I had to steer her out of hypo numbers, I stuck to that schedule. (Again, I was able to be around all the time to monitor, so this worked out quite easily for me. For others who have to work all week, it may not be a manageable way at all.) I did not switch her over to 4 meals per day - which is what she gets now - until she was
very well-regulated on insulin
AND on a really, really
tiny dose of that insulin. So my own little theory about Bat-Bat's barely-functioning pancreas is, in a nutshell: I needed to wake the darned thing UP, not baby it and let it keep on "sleeping."
Again,
every cat is different, and some cats may do better on the mini-meal plan throughout treatment for their FD. I only know what worked well for Bat-Bat.
that a human's BP #s are usually higher later in the day than they are early in the day. (And mine usually is.
I ended up just having to take her into the office, where they had to do the usual thing with her: Put her in the gas box so that she could be touched by someone other than me
Way to pee, Hitchcock!
Great job catching him finally and awesome numbers tonight!! 