6/3 Tessa AMPS 280 +2 265 +3 227 +4 175 +5 147 +6 145 +8 240 PMPS 305 +2 272

[tessa's mom]

Previous: https://felinediabetes.com/FDMB/thr...mps-266-2-212-3-166-4-131-5-121-6-143.290709/

Tessa had a slight back twitch/muscle ripple this morning when the insulin went in, it was similar to the kind of twitch that a cat does when you touch their back, if that makes sense? I wonder if the acidity of the Lantus is bothering her. It could also be the cold of the insulin, I might try setting up the syringe before I get her food ready so it can warm up a little bit before I give it to her.

Tessa had an active cycle last night and I stayed up pretty late so I'll probably end up napping today. I took the day off work so I could rest and because my brain feels like mush so I probably wouldn't be of much use anyway lol.

 

[tessa's mom]

Did she get food after +3 or only low carb treats? In active cycles, you want to feed a tsp of food after every test.

Okay so how do I do this with her timed feeder? Do I take away food to give her later or just give extra food or what?

I wasn't sure what to do so when I tested her just before her timed feeder rotated over for her +3 meal I went over and cut the amount she was getting in half and set aside some to give her after future tests. She got about a quarter can of Fancy Feast in this meal, normally she gets half a can in each meal (total of 3 cans per day) so I have a quarter can reserved for extra feedings.

Do I do this with *every* active cycle? Like no matter what give a teaspoon every hour or do I only do this when she drops fast? I was hoping to take a nap today to make up for the lost sleep last night but it looks like this is another active cycle.

Also, do you mean a literal teaspoon, like the measuring spoon used in cooking or a teaspoon like what you stir tea with?

You could try feeding a part of her PS meal at +2 and then snacks at +4 and +6. You want to feed more in the first part of the cycle and as little as possible (and lowest carbs) later. Feeding later in the cycle can reduce duration and cause higher preshots.

I'm trying to figure out how to do this with the timed feeder. The way I have it set up now is that I fill 3 openings at a time out of the total 5 openings. One opening is the one she's getting right away and the next 2 are for +3 (10pm or am depending on whether it's night or day) and +6 (1pm or 1am). I could have additional settings for different times BUT there are only 4 times I can set so if I want to give more than 3 meals in a cycle then that means I have to set up the schedule for the feeder multiple times a day which is a bit tedious AND I'm a bit concerned about what happens if I forget to change the time and then she has no food overnight or something.

I could set the feeder to open at +4 and +6 and then just give her a separate bowl of some LC food at +2.

Or could I maybe stick with the +3 and +6 feedings and just feed super low carb food like Tiki Cat in those meals? It's not her favorite food but she'll eat it.

 

[tessa's mom]

Because I had set up her food with the idea of giving her half a can at +3 and +6, I decided to pull out about half of the food from each meal and I'm planning on basically giving her a quarter can every hour until +6. Does this sound right?

What should I do going forward? Should I give a much larger meal at shot time? Tessa is a scarf and barf cat so I don't want to feed *too* much but I think she could handle more than half a can at a single meal. I'll need to go back through my old condos and see if I can find how much I was giving her per meal when she was eating Friskies because I know she wasn't eating as many meals back then so clearly she was able to handle more food in a single meal but I'm not sure exactly how much.

Any advice on what to do?

 

[Wendy&Neko]

I held the syringe part with the insulin in it, between my fingers for a bit to help warm it before injecting, or at least take the edge off. It did turn out Neko reacted to the Lantus, mostly by walking away from the shots. But her dose was a lot higher than Tessa's.

With a rotating feeder, you just keep the feeder rotating hourly to the next slot for the next snack. I used a separate bowl for the main PS food, and put down the autofeeder after it was finished (about 30 seconds later ). So you'd set up the feeder to rotate to a +2, +4 and +6 as per Bhooma's suggestion above. I agree it's worth seeing how she responds to a +2 meal. She drops a lot at +3 and extra food on before that at +2 might slow her down.

You do have to experiment with quantities, but I gave Neko about half her cycle food at preshot time, and split the rest up into snacks. Food experiments and what works can differ by cat. Try something for a couple weeks (food experiments take time) and see how it works. Then tweak the experiment.

The definition of active cycle may very. There is a cycle that is a normal Lantus cycle with some downward action. Which looks like what today is doing. Then there is a very active cycle that demands extra monitoring or food. I'd have to look longer at Tessa's SS, but if you look at the difference between PS and +2/+3 last night and today, they give a clue as to what the cycle was going to look like. There was a bigger drop last night.

 

[tessa's mom]

I held the syringe part with the insulin in it, between my fingers for a bit to help warm it before injecting, or at least take the edge off. It did turn out Neko reacted to the Lantus, mostly by walking away from the shots. But her dose was a lot higher than Tessa's.

With a rotating feeder, you just keep the feeder rotating hourly to the next slot for the next snack. I used a separate bowl for the main PS food, and put down the autofeeder after it was finished (about 30 seconds later ). So you'd set up the feeder to rotate to a +2, +4 and +6 as per Bhooma's suggestion above. I agree it's worth seeing how she responds to a +2 meal. She drops a lot at +3 and extra food on before that at +2 might slow her down.

You do have to experiment with quantities, but I gave Neko about half her cycle food at preshot time, and split the rest up into snacks. Food experiments and what works can differ by cat. Try something for a couple weeks (food experiments take time) and see how it works. Then tweak the experiment.

The definition of active cycle may very. There is a cycle that is a normal Lantus cycle with some downward action. Which looks like what today is doing. Then there is a very active cycle that demands extra monitoring or food. I'd have to look longer at Tessa's SS, but if you look at the difference between PS and +2/+3 last night and today, they give a clue as to what the cycle was going to look like. There was a bigger drop last night.

Thanks! I think I'm going to try equal meals at preshot, +2, and +4 tonight and see how that goes. I looked back through my spreadsheet and my old condos and looks like I mostly fed her early in the cycle the last time around and it was equal meals each time for the most part.

I did have some issues later on when her preshot numbers refused to come down while everything else was green and I needed to give her a small snack at +8 or +9 in order to get the numbers down but that was when she was on 0.1u and her pancreas had healed quite a bit. It's probably not necessary at this point.

 

[Wendy&Neko]

It's probably not necessary at this point.

Correct. At this point a small snack would be counterproductive later in the cycle. It's only when they are down to 0.1 units and you know their pancreas is sputtering back that a small snack helps.