05/13 Suzie AMPS 375

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Maria & Suzie

Maria & Suzie

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Morning,

A disappointing AMPS 375 greeted me this morning. Last night her PMPS was 350 and dropped to 234 at +3.

I have not gotten hold of the 0.3ml syringes yet (public holiday here), but after 7 days on 3.5 IU with attempts to switch from dry to soft food, we are now at about 50/50 dry/soft, and haven't been able to get her beyond that for a few days now. (I got Suzie when she was 5, she had only been fed dry food her entire life and she was in a terrible state - dandruff, fur clumps, awful. Through the 10 years I have had her, she has eaten some soft food, but always preferred dry, so old habits die hard).

I'll keep at it though, but since she recently lost weight when she stopped eating, now is not the time for me to play "hardball" and do the "get hungry enough to eat what I give you method", which might work with a younger, stronger, cat, but is far too harsh for my skinny frail old Suzie. I've bought a range of soft low-carb foods and will test to see what entices her old sense of smell to get really interested in.

So I'm facing reality that the transition to soft is going to take longer than I hoped, and I really don't want to see the pinks (& dread the reds coming back), so I increased by a hair today, to a guess-timated 3.75 IU (it's under the 4 IU for sure) and hope that will push her down into the yellows & blues, to give us a little more time to transition to the soft.

The good news is though that she is perky, and I almost have my Suzie back, last night she treated us to a vigorous trot across the living room and attacked her scratching post, which made us smile and made all the effort worth it. This was then followed by a long nap to recover from the exertion :smile:

Taking the time today to organize all the useful info in a file, study catfood ingredients, order some methyl -B12 for those weak hindlegs and generally get organized. I may have to go on a business trip soon and need to leave things so my husband can find them and make use of in my absence.

Maria & Suzie
 
It took me a LONG time to get Do Lou off dry as well he was a total dry food junkie too but it really does make a diff with your numbers once you get them on all LC wet just go slow and take your time switching so she gets used to it :-D It can be so hard on cats who really love their dry but if Do Lou can do it I know Suzie can too have a great day cat_pet_icon :YMHUG:
 
I can tell you a story about about tough cases when it comes to transitioning from dry food! Your progress so far is monumental compared to what I went through. It took me 1 year to get rid of the dry food! My cat was OTJ by the time I got him 100% on canned food. There are some lower carb dry foods available which you might want to try if you need to feed some dry. Check out that Zooplus online store Arcana and Orjien are 2 that are grain-free and around 10% carbs. The fact that she is behaving like a cat is a good sign, she is probably feeling better. Our sugar babies are more than just BG numbers! Since diet wasn't an easy to manipulate factor while I was treating Spooky I had to do what ever it took with his insulin dose to control his numbers. I was able to keep him in healthy ranges enough that his pancreas healed while struggleing the whole time to get him interested in canned food. At the end his pancreas had healed quite nicely but I still spent months giving him a "drop" of insulin to offset the extra carbs in his dry food. Eventually he did go OTJ once we got him eating about 50/50 wet and dry. I knew in order for him to stay in remission I would have to eliminate the dry all together which we acheived a few months later. Still after months of eating canned food which is pretty happy about now (and has expanded his tastes) if he hears something rattle that sounds like dry food he burns up the floors running to get some. :roll:
 
Monique,

Thanks for the tip on the Aldi food! While the cans we have here are not high quality enough, the 100g square aluminium ones are. I just gave one to Suzie, and it's been a long time since I've seen an old cat move so fast! She was really enthusiastic, I put about 50g in her bowl and I think she managed to get half of that down (it's the no teeth thing, she licks & licks and struggles to get the more solid pieces of the soft food down).

But, with that enthusiasm, we are half-way there and I now have a growing list of possible foods for her (so nice to not to be chained to the vet for food, not just because of the cost, but the inconvenience of having to call, order, go there, etc...)

Her +4 reading was 310. I suppose the way Lantus works, it'll take a while before I see any effect from the slightly increased dose this morning...

Now I'm hoping that the 2nd half of that portion smells just as interesting to her in a few hours (smell is everything when you are that old...).

Thanks again,

Maria & Suzie
 
True...my grandmother can't smell at all anymore so her cooking has gotten rather bland :lol: My cats don't seem to care, but most like the food at least room temp or even warmer (mouse body temp :-D ) it smells stronger too. Which is why I prefer they eat it cold so I don't smell it! If you are putting the leftovers in the fridge (which you should) try taking it out and mashing it up (maybe add a few teaspoons hot water) and microwave for a few seconds then stir again to make sure there are no "hot spots". Once I did that and it was too warm and Socks burnt his mouth. For days after that he was very cautious and whacked the food off the plate onto the floor with his paw before eating it, to test if it was safe.

Another thing that got Spooky interested in the food was sprinkleing parmasan cheese on it (that's really smelly). Spooky had a hard time eating canned food at first partly because he didn't know how to get it into his mouth (he has all his teeth too) he was pretty messy at first, now he still pushes the food all around and goes in circles around the dish while eating but now what he pushes out or slops around he cleans up including turning the dish upside down to get what's underneath. Sometimes i find the dishes across the room when they are done.
 
Suzie just surfaced from her sleeping-tent, and polished off the rest of the soft food ! She liked it so much that she sat and did a paw & face groom afterwards (something we have not seen around here for a long time!). I'm just so happy to find something she likes to eat with enthusiasm ! (and it's soft too!). I'll try the hot water tip to make it easier for her to get it down.

I'm not expecting fabulous values from her today, but she clearly feels good, and that counts too!

Thanks for the Tugger's spreadsheet, helps give me hope !

Tomorrow I have to be away most of the day, so I'll be locking her into a room (sorry Suzie, there's no other way to make sure the civvies don't eat it all when I'm not there to distract them) with a buffet of food... HOpefully she doesn't throw a number in the morning to freak me out!
 
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