Hi Tonya!!! Welcome to you and Tiki. I'm sorry I haven't been to your condo yet.
Here's the link to yesterday's condo:
Tiki's 11/6 condo
On the dose: here is the important part of the protocol regarding the starting dose and when to increase:
"General" Guidelines:
•Hold the initial starting dose for 5 - 7 days (10 - 14 consecutive cycles) unless the numbers tell you otherwise. Kitties experiencing high flat curves or prone to ketones may want to increase the starting dose after 3 days (6 consecutive cycles).
•Each subsequent dose is held for a minimum of 3 days (6 consecutive cycles) unless kitty earns a reduction (See: Reducing the dose...).
•Adjustments to dose are based on nadirs with only some consideration given to preshot numbers.
Increasing the dose:
•Hold the dose for 3 - 5 days (6 - 10 consecutive cycles) if nadirs are less than 200 before increasing the dose.
•After 3 days (6 consecutive cycles)... if nadirs are greater than 200, but less than 300 increase the dose by 0.25 unit.
•After 3 days (6 consecutive cycles)... if nadirs are greater than 300 increase the dose by 0.5 unit.
Right now, he's filling his lantus shed and so you won't see much movement in numbers. Tonight will be his sixth dose. If he is still high and flat tonight, I would be prone to taking him up by .25u tomorrow to .75u. I'm sure others will chime in with their thoughts as well.
Regarding food, many of us feed on a specific schedule in order to control the curve. A lot of the lantus folks feed at PS, +1, +2, +3. Since it's early in the "dance", it's hard to know what feeding schedule might work best for him. You don't want to feed feed feed him right now. As the insulin kicks in, he'll start to adjust and be better able to use the glucose and shouldn't be as hungry. IMHO, as long as you are feeding him a low carb canned food, then it's probably not the food keeping his numbers high but the need to fill the shed and the fact that the dose may just need to come up slowly.
What we did with Gracie was note her ideal weight and then calculate how many calories/day she needed for that weight and then divided it up into her feedings to manage her curve. That might be a good way to start with him.
Dr. Lisa Pierson has this formula on her website
Dr. Lisa
Required calories per day = [13.6 X optimal lean body weight in pounds] + 70
Most female cats should weigh a nice, lean 10 -11 pounds. Most male cats should fall into the 11 -13 pound range.
Using an optimal body weight of 12 pounds as an example, we come up with 233 calories/day as a starting point
I found this to be quite generous and more than Gracie needed. It's important to note the "optimal lean body weight" part of it ;-)
I hope that helps! Let us know if you have other questions. Also...we typically do not feed between +10 and +12 or you'll get a food inflated spike to shoot and you don't want to do that. Maybe Tiki would benefit from an automated timed feeder. Many use them successfully.
