Vet tech advice on feeding seems off

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Wendy Harlow

Wendy Harlow

Member Since 2018
When asked how much wet food to give Jack, the tech said 1/4 large can or 1/2 small can twice a day. I do have dry food down as well, but would really like to get to a point where Jack's regulated as much by diet as possible (I realize it might not be possible) and get him off the dry. But that amount of wet seems awfully small, and the FF little cans say to feed 1 can per 2.5lbs of cat. O_o

I usually feed him at the sevens - 7am and 7pm or close to it. He gets his insulin at the same time. He starts demanding a snack about 1-1:30pm, and dry doesn't seem to be what he wants.

He does need to lose some weight - he's 16lbs now, up four from two years ago - but I know how difficult that is from personal experience (hah). I know getting him onto lower-carb foods will help with that.

Having to relearn how to care for a cat, since I grew up with always-available dry + water bowl, occasional wet. Worried I broke my cat by feeding too many carbs. :(
 
A diet of all high-protein, low-carb wet food is best. If you do feed any dry food, choose one of the low carbs ones like Dr Elseys Clean Protein. 'Regular' dry food has way too many carbs. I have read that 20 calories per pound of ideal body weight per day is appropriate for an 'average' cat.

Feeding only twice a day is not necessary. For many (probably most) cats, it works out better to feed multiple times per day. I choose to feed 4 times, and I leave leftovers out for grazing.
 
1/2 of a small can (say of Fancy Feast) twice a day would only give around 90 calories total for the entire day, which is not enough. Part of the vet tech degree course covers nutrition and calculating calories so the tech should be more than aware of how many calories a cat needs. As an approximate calculation, you can take his ideal weight and multiply it by 18 to get a rough idea of how many calories he needs per day in total (it's not the exact calculation, which is rather more complex, but works out pretty close). Then you feed as many cans in a day as you need to to meet that calorie level. You can feed several times a day, or even leave the wet food down for him to graze on if he prefers to do that as long as you stick to the daily calorie total - just like people, some cats like to take a few mouthfuls of food here and there, others prefer to eat fewer, larger meals and either is fine as long as you don't go over the daily total for calories. Once he's been on that number of calories for a few weeks, you should be able to get a good idea of whether he's losing the excess weight gradually, maintaining (in which case you'd need to cut him down a little more), or gaining (in which case, you'd need to cut him back rather more severely). There are no absolute values because, just as with people, individual calorie requirements vary from one cat to another. Also, if he's currently unregulated as a diabetic (his numbers aren't under control yet), then he will need rather more food than he otherwise would do as he won't be getting the full nutritional value out of what he eats.
 
The strict feeding schedule doesn't always work out. No two cats are the same. Both Noah and before that Nigel ate as much as they wanted with the exception of course being the 2 hour pre test. It's never as simple as what the textbook says just like everything else in life. With a dose of common sense go with your instincts.
 
manxcat419 said:
1/2 of a small can (say of Fancy Feast) twice a day would only give around 90 calories total for the entire day, which is not enough. ...As an approximate calculation, you can take his ideal weight and multiply it by 18 to get a rough idea of how many calories he needs per day in total (it's not the exact calculation, which is rather more complex, but works out pretty close)....There are no absolute values because, just as with people, individual calorie requirements vary from one cat to another. Also, if he's currently unregulated as a diabetic (his numbers aren't under control yet), then he will need rather more food than he otherwise would do as he won't be getting the full nutritional value out of what he eats...
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I suspect she was taking into consideration the dry always being down, but he honestly prefers wet over dry any day of the week. XD

Thank you for your detailed explanation. Definitely adding another feeding at the very least, and double-checking the calories. He didn't complain too much the first couple of days on the insulin, but he's starting to get used to having it in his system and starting to feel hungry again. His ideal weight is around 12 pounds, so he needs about 220 calories a day as a minimum.
 
JanetNJ said:
Maybe she meant that's how much he should eat to be enough to get the shot? My cats might eat that much when I initially feed them, but then they a wonder back to it throughout the day.
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That's a possibility. And there was no mention of removing dry food from his diet, either.
 
I appreciate all your answers! It's a steep learning curve, for sure, but he'll be healthier at the end of it.

Thank gods he's not a picky eater.
 
Wendy Harlow said:
His ideal weight is around 12 pounds, so he needs about 220 calories a day as a minimum.
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That makes sense. So you want to double the tech's advised amount to at least one full small can per feeding if you're going to try to feed twice a day. Plus another 1/2 can or thereabouts as snacks. Those amounts would be for Fancy Feast classics as that's what I give here at the moment and know the calorie counts for. Other brands may vary a little, but the calorie counts are usually pretty easy to track down. Or you can split it all up and give him 1/2 can at a time, 5 times a day. Or really whatever he prefers. If he likes wet better than dry, then I would feed only the wet food - dry food is less than ideal for a diabetic cat, so when you have one who willingly eats wet food over dry I would just go with his preference on that. :)
 
Thank you to all who gave a more specific reply. Wendy, Noah has not been weighed in a very long time so I'm just so happy to see him eat. I don't like the scale. When we change everything about a cat's day and habits it's going to affect them and we can't explain it to them. I didn't want to imply feed him 24/7. We have a cat that eats for the sake of eating and if we're not careful he'll be our third diabetic cat. I don't need that in my life right now.
 
Wendy Harlow said:
I suspect she was taking into consideration the dry always being down, but he honestly prefers wet over dry any day of the week. XD

Thank you for your detailed explanation. Definitely adding another feeding at the very least, and double-checking the calories. He didn't complain too much the first couple of days on the insulin, but he's starting to get used to having it in his system and starting to feel hungry again. His ideal weight is around 12 pounds, so he needs about 220 calories a day as a minimum.
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If he prefers wet, I'd suggest doing away with the dry completely sooner rather than later. I always kept dry down all the time and used wet as a treat. As soon as I read the advice here, the dry bowl went into a closet only to come out for the non- diabetic cats who aren't converted to wet yet. Grandpa is sent to chill in my bedroom at those times.

The vet that diagnosed Grandpa also wanted me to only feed a tiny amount every 12 hours. She wanted a goal of one 3oz can at each of the 2 meals plus an 1/8 cup Rx dry. Grandpa started vomiting 6 hours into each cycle. I followed advice here and calculated 20 cal per pound of ideal weight and split the food into two main meals with his shots plus snacks every four hours. I also stopped the prescription food. Made a huge improvement!

Good luck!
 
@Wendy Harlow Beck and I are in the same leaky boat with cats that have gone past their best-before date. I'm not being dismissive of things like carbohydrates or calories but just like us cats don't like hospital food. I use Whiskas Temptations to get Fathead out of Noah's basket so I can get Noah in there for a test and poke. They raise his sugar levels but bribery is part of life with cats. If you follow Grandpa's adventures in life he is a very bad boy, like the kid balancing on a chair to get the cookies off the top of the fridge. Noah also has a thing for certain types of wet dog food so I just let him do it. It's quite a sight seeing a large dog with a sad face because a scrawny old cat pushed him off his food. I mush up the dog food and give Noah a sample, that's all he wants.
We want our cats to be healthy and happy and it's not always easy, some rules are meant to be bent as long as there is some common sense.
 
Noah & me (GA) said:
We want our cats to be healthy and happy and it's not always easy, some rules are meant to be bent as long as there is some common sense.
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This advice is some of the best I've seen. We all bend the rules sooner or later. My Regan only wanted fish-flavored foods her last 3 months. We knew what she had couldn't be fixed (ARVC) and that it was going to stop her heart sooner or later. She got the fish. And the Temptations treats (fortunately she'd never shown any signs of being diabetic). And the Fancy Feast in creamy sauce that she loved. She got her food brought to her so she didn't have to tangle with the other cats to get enough to eat. She even got bits of my food if she seemed to want them. She was happy for as long as we could keep everything going for her. Happiness matters for us and for our cats.
 
@manxcat419 This is off topic but I can't help myself. After our dog had her third ultrasound and another indeterminate needle biopsy the oncologist, who was almost in tears and never did say the "C" word paused and I said "So treat her like a Princess and let her eat whatever she wants?". This was as I was doling out pieces of chicken breast to her Highness. Those idiots got it wrong and after 100 days we stopped counting. But keeping up the Princess treatment was a little hard. "Hey, I'm sick. Where's my chicken?" Oh you're not that sick, have some dog food.
Our first diabetic cat was circling the drain when our vet had the common sense to say this isn't working, feed him whatever he wants. The answers aren't always in a textbook.
 
They're really not. Knowing the answers by the book is sometimes the easiest part. Adjusting that information to suit the individual cat - or dog - is much less straightforward. Yet much more rewarding when it works. And if some chicken or a change of food is what it takes to get our pets feeling better instead of us having to simply watch them fade, then I don't think there's any way we can say it's wrong to do no matter what "the books" tell us. Sure, when we break the rules, we have to stay within reasonable limits, but sometimes the rules just don't suit the individual animal.
 
I'm working on the everything in moderation theory. I've found that most of the advice I've received is good. That advice forms the core of what I do. I do pre- shot tests without food in his system, I buy can food using the 10% max carb rule, I feed multiple meals a day, etc. When Grandpa is eating willingly, I keep him on a pretty strict diet plan since I've seen that being too lax has bad effects (pancreatitis and gastritis). When he isn't eating well, I will pull out some less ideal tricks, but I try to combine those with the good for him stuff to hopefully get him thinking kindly of his ideal food again.

Hmmm. Maybe I should put ice cream on some broccoli and see if that helps me.
 
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