New Member - Brie - Overwhelmed

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Brie’s Mom

Brie’s Mom

Member Since 2022
Hi everyone, my name is Jessie and my 4 y/o cat Brie was just diagnosed. I first noticed an increase in urination and drinking, followed by some slight weight loss. Her initial BG was 23.5mmo/L - but was very stressed in the vet. They also found glucose in the urine - which confirmed diagnosis.

She was started on 1iu of Prozinc twice daily. I have purchased a meter but it unfortunately did not come with the calibrating solution so I am waiting for that in the mail. I have corn syrup and high carb kibble ready in case she is showing signs of hypo but it has been very nerve wracking not having the glucometer ready to test for sure. So far we are on day 3 and doing well!

I have switched her from a dry kibble to friskies pate- which is one of my main questions... My brain can't process that friskies is good for cats - I've seen the food charts listed here and have checked the online calculators and can see that they are low in carbs but then when converted to dry matter basis it jumps to over 10%. So which do we value? The wet food carbs listed on the chart of dry matter basis?

I am in Canada so a lot of the brands listed aren't available here. Ideally I'd love to be on tiki cat constantly but I am currently on a very limited income as I navigate my own new chronic illness.

Another question is food quantity. The directions on the sides of cans seem insane. Brie is 13.5lbs and some say to feed 1 10oz can per day! There's no way she could fit that much food inside of her stomach. I have been basing it off of recommended caloric intake supplied by the vet (220 kcal/day) which works out to 1 1/4 cans of Friskies. Does that seem right?

Also if I were to say do 3/4 of her meal friskies and 1/4 tiki cat - would that lower the carb content?

She also has a hard time finishing her 2 meals per day - are multiple smaller meals ok?

Sorry for all of the food questions- this has been extremely confusing to start. The internet and vet has very conflicting opinions. I was frustrated when my vet tried to get me to switch her to a Prescription diabetic dry kibble(?) and a diabetic wet food - both of which had very high carbs.

Once my glucometer is ready I will start the spreadsheet too.

Thank you to everyone in advance - this is such a helpful and to the looks of it a welcoming community that I am happy to have found!

All the best and Happy Holidays -
Jessie and Brie
 
Hi Jessie and Brie! Welcome to the club :)

On diagnosis, did they do a fructosamine test by chance?

You probably don’t need to wait for the calibrating solution, if you are not diabetic you can test yourself and that should be all that’s needed. I didn’t even think the contour even needed that tbh.. For human meter, normal range is 2.8-6.7 mmol

The carb calculators are only really an estimate as you’re getting your numbers from the can which are max/mins. When it comes to foods, you are actually looking for the Typical Nutrient Analysis (TNA) or Metabolic Energy Carbs (ME carbs) which is what you’re seeing on the charts from catinfo.org. Some brands provide this information on their websites but unfortunately most don’t and you would need to contact the company itself for this information. I’m in Canada as well, (Hello from Ottawa!), we use fancy feast pates mostly as they range from 3-4%. We also put special kitty, Performatrin ‘classic’ and friskies (all pates) into the rotation

When talking quantity, your main concern is that they are eating enough and you can feed as much and as often as they want. I was feeding my Gus up to 4-5 cans of fancy feast a day before he was regulated. I did breakfast/dinner (insulin time) and mini meals throughout the day. Most of our diabetics are extra hungry, they just don’t use their calories well. Basically without insulin to steer glucose into the cells, the cat's body looks for alternative sources of fuel and breaks down reserves of fat and protein stored in the body. Fueling the body is not efficient without the insulin/glucose team. This is why you often see diabetics lose weight. Until they regulate it’s recommended here to feed smaller meals throughout the day, it’s actually easier on the pancreas and helps with regulating.

Just a quick note on the mentioned high carb kibbles. I’d actually recommend you grab some high carb wet food (ie: fancy feast gravy lovers) for your hypokit. It acts faster than the dry food will and we have a little more control of knowing when it kicks in (about 20mins) and when it wears off (around 1.5-2 hours) .. dry food is a big of an unknown, takes longer to kick in and sticks around in the system longer, sometimes longer than we’d like.

I hope that helps a bit. Looking forward to seeing that spreadsheet filled in with some tests :) Let us know if you need any help with starting your spreadsheet
 
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Brie’s Mom said:
Hi everyone, my name is Jessie and my 4 y/o cat Brie was just diagnosed. I first noticed an increase in urination and drinking, followed by some slight weight loss. Her initial BG was 23.5mmo/L - but was very stressed in the vet. They also found glucose in the urine - which confirmed diagnosis.

She was started on 1iu of Prozinc twice daily. I have purchased a meter but it unfortunately did not come with the calibrating solution so I am waiting for that in the mail. I have corn syrup and high carb kibble ready in case she is showing signs of hypo but it has been very nerve wracking not having the glucometer ready to test for sure. So far we are on day 3 and doing well!

I have switched her from a dry kibble to friskies pate- which is one of my main questions... My brain can't process that friskies is good for cats - I've seen the food charts listed here and have checked the online calculators and can see that they are low in carbs but then when converted to dry matter basis it jumps to over 10%. So which do we value? The wet food carbs listed on the chart of dry matter basis?

I am in Canada so a lot of the brands listed aren't available here. Ideally I'd love to be on tiki cat constantly but I am currently on a very limited income as I navigate my own new chronic illness.

Another question is food quantity. The directions on the sides of cans seem insane. Brie is 13.5lbs and some say to feed 1 10oz can per day! There's no way she could fit that much food inside of her stomach. I have been basing it off of recommended caloric intake supplied by the vet (220 kcal/day) which works out to 1 1/4 cans of Friskies. Does that seem right?

Also if I were to say do 3/4 of her meal friskies and 1/4 tiki cat - would that lower the carb content?

She also has a hard time finishing her 2 meals per day - are multiple smaller meals ok?

Sorry for all of the food questions- this has been extremely confusing to start. The internet and vet has very conflicting opinions. I was frustrated when my vet tried to get me to switch her to a Prescription diabetic dry kibble(?) and a diabetic wet food - both of which had very high carbs.

Once my glucometer is ready I will start the spreadsheet too.

Thank you to everyone in advance - this is such a helpful and to the looks of it a welcoming community that I am happy to have found!

All the best and Happy Holidays -
Jessie and Brie
Click to expand...

Hi! Welcome. I hope you're doing okay, I know I was insanely stressed when Sam was diagnosed. He's a lot older than your cat. He was almost dead when we diagnosed him; had lost a third of his body weight, drinking a litre per day, large scale wasting/muscle atrophy. He's totally fine now. Please don't worry; your cat will be fine.

As for Friskies; what matters is the percentage of the carbs, protein and fats by CALORIES. Wet food is 78% MOISTURE (friskies and fancy feast are for the most part anyway). Both are fine for a cat. People think Friskies is cheap; I guarantee you it is WAAAY better than any "scientific blend" dry food. Friskies is 100% fine for a cat with no other serious health proble,s so is fancy feast. Cheap does not equal bad.

Dry foods are just inherently awful. Sam's dose of insulin has dropped from 3 units to 1 unit from switching from a purina proplan DM dry food to a basic friskies wet pate. For example; the friskies tuna/ocean whitefish pate is about 7-8% carbs by calories, but only like 2.5% by weight. Fancy feast seafood pate is only like 5% carbs by calories. keep in mind though these are estimates; but users have had good success with both Friskies Pate and Fancy feast pate (make sure you're not buying the grilled/gravy type; the protein percent needs to be 10% or above, and fat 3.5-4% or above). The purina proplan DM dry food, almost 100 bucks per 10 lb bag in Canada? Yeah that's 19% carbs by calories. Compare that to even 9% with friskies and it's no question. Plus it's a lot cheaper; 80 cents a can at walmart! When I feed sam Friskies he gets 1.5 cans per day. Dirt cheap, but way better than any dry food.

For a 13.5 lb cat? Yeah; 10 oz's is kind of excessive, but not really that exessive. Sam's about 13 lb's; he should have 270 calories per day. A small can of fancy feast is 88 calories. So he should eat 3 cans per day, each can is 2.5 oz's. That's about what he eats now. It'll take time to switch to wet food. But it's worth it. And yes; I'd try to feed 2 bigger meals with multiple smaller snacks/meals throughout the day. That's totally fine with a long acting insulin like Prozinc.

Keep in mind, in Canada, Lantus is cheaper than Prozinc. A 10ml bottle cost me 80 bucks from the pharmacy and will last 6 months if stored in the fridge. Just something to keep in mind. You will also find a lot more members on the Lantus forum to help you out with dosing as per the protocols. Please do work on home testing. I didn't home test for 3 months. When I started I quickly found that Sam was being overdosed on Insulin, dropping super low and rebounding back super high. As a result I've been able to lower his dose massively. I only started 3 weeks ago; it isn't hard. Give your cat a treat before and after testing, use one spot to test on, and make sure they get a treat within 15-20 seconds of being tested. Sam now is totally fine with testing as a result.

If you need help reach out. Glad you found this place, it helped me a lot and might've saved Sam's life.
 
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Hi and welcome Jessie and Brie to the forum. Ask lots of questions, we are happy to answer them all. It’s a steep learning curve in the beginning.
I agree with Kim…get rid of the dry food that you are using for the hypo kit and get some high carb wet for the hypo kit. Once you start hometesting you will feel more confident about everything. I wouldn’t wait until you start testing the BG to set up the spreadsheet, I would do it now while you have time.
I’m going to tag @FrostD as she is a Prozinc user.

Useful links
HELP US HELP YOU
HOMETESTING HINTS AND LINKS
 
Brie’s Mom said:
Brie is 13.5lbs and some say to feed 1 10oz can per day! There's no way she could fit that much food inside of her stomach. I have been basing it off of recommended caloric intake supplied by the vet (220 kcal/day) which works out to 1 1/4 cans of Friskies. Does that seem right?
Click to expand...

Is 13.5lbs her ideal weight? There's a formula you can use to determine calories per day (to start with anyway)

It's [13.6 x IDEAL weight in pounds] + 70.....so if 13.5 is her ideal weight, start at between 250-260 calories per day. With the Fancy Feasts, that's about 2 3/4 cans per day.

Weigh about every 4 days and adjust the calories as needed. A lot of us have baby scales to weigh our cats on, but you can use a plain bathroom scale too. Just weigh yourself, pick her up and weigh both of you and do the math. It's not terribly exact, but close enough to know if she's losing, gaining or staying about the same.
 
Gus the Furminator said:
Hi Jessie and Brie! Welcome to the club :)

On diagnosis, did they do a fructosamine test by chance?

You probably don’t need to wait for the calibrating solution, if you are not diabetic you can test yourself and that should be all that’s needed. I didn’t even think the contour even needed that tbh.. For human meter, normal range is 2.8-6.7 mmol

The carb calculators are only really an estimate as you’re getting your numbers from the can which are max/mins. When it comes to foods, you are actually looking for the Typical Nutrient Analysis (TNA) or Metabolic Energy Carbs (ME carbs) which is what you’re seeing on the charts from catinfo.org. Some brands provide this information on their websites but unfortunately most don’t and you would need to contact the company itself for this information. I’m in Canada as well, (Hello from Ottawa!), we use fancy feast pates mostly as they range from 3-4%. We also put special kitty, Performatrin ‘classic’ and friskies (all pates) into the rotation

When talking quantity, your main concern is that they are eating enough and you can feed as much and as often as they want. I was feeding my Gus up to 4-5 cans of fancy feast a day before he was regulated. I did breakfast/dinner (insulin time) and mini meals throughout the day. Most of our diabetics are extra hungry, they just don’t use their calories well. Basically without insulin to steer glucose into the cells, the cat's body looks for alternative sources of fuel and breaks down reserves of fat and protein stored in the body. Fueling the body is not efficient without the insulin/glucose team. This is why you often see diabetics lose weight. Until they regulate it’s recommended here to feed smaller meals throughout the day, it’s actually easier on the pancreas and helps with regulating.

Just a quick note on the mentioned high carb kibbles. I’d actually recommend you grab some high carb wet food (ie: fancy feast gravy lovers) for your hypokit. It acts faster than the dry food will and we have a little more control of knowing when it kicks in (about 20mins) and when it wears off (around 1.5-2 hours) .. dry food is a big of an unknown, takes longer to kick in and sticks around in the system longer, sometimes longer than we’d like.

I hope that helps a bit. Looking forward to seeing that spreadsheet filled in with some tests :) Let us know if you need any help with starting your spreadsheet
Click to expand...

Thank you so much for the info! Hello from BC!

They offered to do a fructosamine test but said if funds were an issue that they could safely say that it was diabetes even without one so I opted not to.

I will definitely pick up some high carb wet food for the kit - thanks for the tip!
 
Welcome!

Did she by chance have any other issues at diagnosis? Infections, inflammation? Prior steroid use?

Any history of ketones or DKA? You know if she had DKA because it requires hospitalization, ketones would be shown in lab work if they checked for them.

If you are changing diet without testing, I would reduce to 0.5U twice a day (12 hours apart) to be a little more safe.
 
chuckstables said:
Hi! Welcome. I hope you're doing okay, I know I was insanely stressed when Sam was diagnosed. He's a lot older than your cat. He was almost dead when we diagnosed him; had lost a third of his body weight, drinking a litre per day, large scale wasting/muscle atrophy. He's totally fine now. Please don't worry; your cat will be fine.

As for Friskies; what matters is the percentage of the carbs, protein and fats by CALORIES. Wet food is 78% MOISTURE (friskies and fancy feast are for the most part anyway). Both are fine for a cat. People think Friskies is cheap; I guarantee you it is WAAAY better than any "scientific blend" dry food. Friskies is 100% fine for a cat with no other serious health proble,s so is fancy feast. Cheap does not equal bad.

Dry foods are just inherently awful. Sam's dose of insulin has dropped from 3 units to 1 unit from switching from a purina proplan DM dry food to a basic friskies wet pate. For example; the friskies tuna/ocean whitefish pate is about 7-8% carbs by calories, but only like 2.5% by weight. Fancy feast seafood pate is only like 5% carbs by calories. keep in mind though these are estimates; but users have had good success with both Friskies Pate and Fancy feast pate (make sure you're not buying the grilled/gravy type; the protein percent needs to be 10% or above, and fat 3.5-4% or above). The purina proplan DM dry food, almost 100 bucks per 10 lb bag in Canada? Yeah that's 19% carbs by calories. Compare that to even 9% with friskies and it's no question. Plus it's a lot cheaper; 80 cents a can at walmart! When I feed sam Friskies he gets 1.5 cans per day. Dirt cheap, but way better than any dry food.

For a 13.5 lb cat? Yeah; 10 oz's is kind of excessive, but not really that exessive. Sam's about 13 lb's; he should have 270 calories per day. A small can of fancy feast is 88 calories. So he should eat 3 cans per day, each can is 2.5 oz's. That's about what he eats now. It'll take time to switch to wet food. But it's worth it. And yes; I'd try to feed 2 bigger meals with multiple smaller snacks/meals throughout the day. That's totally fine with a long acting insulin like Prozinc.

Keep in mind, in Canada, Lantus is cheaper than Prozinc. A 10ml bottle cost me 80 bucks from the pharmacy and will last 6 months if stored in the fridge. Just something to keep in mind. You will also find a lot more members on the Lantus forum to help you out with dosing as per the protocols. Please do work on home testing. I didn't home test for 3 months. When I started I quickly found that Sam was being overdosed on Insulin, dropping super low and rebounding back super high. As a result I've been able to lower his dose massively. I only started 3 weeks ago; it isn't hard. Give your cat a treat before and after testing, use one spot to test on, and make sure they get a treat within 15-20 seconds of being tested. Sam now is totally fine with testing as a result.

If you need help reach out. Glad you found this place, it helped me a lot and might've saved Sam's life.
Click to expand...

Thank you so much! I definitely had a few meltdown days when I first was looking into everything. It was also daunting because she is so young - hoping for a miracle that she can go into remission. Thankfully she is food motivated so the insulin shots are easy to do... but I tried doing a glucometer reading last night and it was a total failure. Cue another meltdown! haha! Hopefully that will come with practice.

Yeah the vet recommended purina pro plan DM in wet and dry- thank god I had a weird feeling in my gut and said I'd do more research first. I will probably switch over to FF but I just bought a huge case of friskies on Amazon of course so will wait a bit or do half and half.

Great tip on the Lantus - my 10ml bottle of Prozinc was $167...

Thanks again!
 
FrostD said:
Welcome!

Did she by chance have any other issues at diagnosis? Infections, inflammation? Prior steroid use?

Any history of ketones or DKA? You know if she had DKA because it requires hospitalization, ketones would be shown in lab work if they checked for them.

If you are changing diet without testing, I would reduce to 0.5U twice a day (12 hours apart) to be a little more safe.
Click to expand...

No issues at all other than being slightly overweight. Everyone thought I was nuts when I suspected DM. No ketones that I was told about and definitely no DKA.

Hoping to start testing asap but had a very difficult time when I tried last night. It's going to take some practice.

Thanks for your help!
 
Brie’s Mom said:
Thank you so much! I definitely had a few meltdown days when I first was looking into everything. It was also daunting because she is so young - hoping for a miracle that she can go into remission. Thankfully she is food motivated so the insulin shots are easy to do... but I tried doing a glucometer reading last night and it was a total failure. Cue another meltdown! haha! Hopefully that will come with practice.

Yeah the vet recommended purina pro plan DM in wet and dry- thank god I had a weird feeling in my gut and said I'd do more research first. I will probably switch over to FF but I just bought a huge case of friskies on Amazon of course so will wait a bit or do half and half.

Great tip on the Lantus - my 10ml bottle of Prozinc was $167...

Thanks again!
Click to expand...

No problem! The insulin is the cheapest part for me lol. 1000 units per bottle is like 8 cents per unit, so like 16 cents a day. You can always ask to switch. If you’re not going to then consider buying online? 167 is too much; https://www.petsdrugmart.ca/en/Product/ProZinc-Insulin-3213300/3742 has them for like 106 i think plus tax. It’s where i bought caninsulin for sam when he was on that type.


As for testing; associate a treat with it. Use one spot for testing. Bring her there regularly, go through the normal testing procedures (warm ear with a sock of rice put in the microwave for 30 seconds or so, pill bottle with warm water, touch ear like you’re going to test, but don’t test). Then give her her favorite treat (you can give a few even initially to get her into it).

Even if the test goes horribly, still give her a treat (ideally a couple if it goes badly so that she maintains a neutral or positive association with the process). Sam now, while annoyed when i test, doesn’t fight or cry unless i miss/go to deep and through the ear.
 
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Hello and a warm welcome, also from cold and snowy BC.

In our Health Links forum, there is an Index Sticky Note that points to all sorts of useful posts, including one full of testing tips and videos. I too had a few meltdowns to start. It’s very common.

Should you decide at some point to change to Lantus, you will need different syringes, U100 ones. The BD Ultrafine II, purple and yellow box, are available at most pharmacies. Do shop around, pricing varies a lot. I found Safeway Pharmacy cheapest near me, Costco and Superstore a close second. Ditto for meters, strips, and lancets. Some people find cheap test strips on eBay.
 
Wendy&Neko said:
Hello and a warm welcome, also from cold and snowy BC.

In our Health Links forum, there is an Index Sticky Note that points to all sorts of useful posts, including one full of testing tips and videos. I too had a few meltdowns to start. It’s very common.

Should you decide at some point to change to Lantus, you will need different syringes, U100 ones. The BD Ultrafine II, purple and yellow box, are available at most pharmacies. Do shop around, pricing varies a lot. I found Safeway Pharmacy cheapest near me, Costco and Superstore a close second. Ditto for meters, strips, and lancets. Some people find cheap test strips on eBay.
Click to expand...

How much are they over there? I’m in Surrey and they’re 48 for a box of 100 at Save On Foods for the bd ultrafine 0.3cc ones
 
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