pistull said:
Hi LIbby...my days flucuate quite a bit, but I try to shoot as close to +12 as possible. In the mornings the reason it's earlier sometimes is that when Giz is hungry, he's HUNGRY and won't allow me to sleep until he's fed! Period. So sometimes he gets up an hour before regular feeding time and wants FOOD! Keep in mind this is 3am...! :lol: So I figure if I'm going to feed him, I want to dose him too so his #'s don't skyrocket from the food. Maybe they wouldn't rise that quickly, but who knows? I need to somehow get him to 4:30am and then I could dose him on the +12 dot morning and night. He won't have it some mornings!! Maybe I will try an experiment....I will set the self timer for 3:30 with food in it and I will dose him at 4:30. I'd have to see what it does to his #'s. Thoughts?
Hey there! I noticed you are from MN, too! :mrgreen:
I had a cat with FD who did not eat great, so she ate whenever and whatever she felt like (including kibble). What I ended up doing was trying to figure out what kind of rise she was getting from her food (especially the kibble), what time it hit, and how soon it wore off. This was very helpful for me. Example: If she was lower than usual at shot time, but knew she ate kibble a few hours earlier, I would often be more hesitant to shoot the full dose because I knew part of that number was inflated by the food and might wear off as the insulin kicked in. If she had not eaten and was lower than usual I knew it was a 'truer' number and would attempt to feed and shoot. There were even times I felt more comfortable shooting a lower number when I knew she had JUST eaten kibble...because it would somewhat offset her numbers once she hit the nadir.
So maybe, if you have a chance, you could test him pre and post eating, with a few extra follow ups to see how he responds to food? Once you have an idea how he responds, feeding at +10 (or even +11) may not be an issue.
Another thought might be to put some freeze dried treats in the timed feeder for him to snack on, and give you that extra hour or so of sleep.
Sounds like Gizzy has had a lot of changes going on. Did I read he developed herpes from your other cat? My foster kitty has herpes, too. I wonder if you could try some rescue remedy? Another FDMB member from MN brought some over for my foster cat after her eye surgery. I would be happy to share some of it with you. I can't say for sure if it helped. It certainly did not hurt.
If there is any local support I can offer, let me know!