@JeffJ I was wondering if there were a lot of new folks or if this was normal. Seemed like quite a few fellow cat guardians posted intros the week I joined!
Thanks so much for the tip that I should keep an eye on him this afternoon. I'll do that. It's so nice to have folks here looking out for us, thank you!
The food question requires a long response, I'm afraid.
I just realized I need to update my signature, because Perry's main food right now is a ProPlan True Nature that comes in at 6% carb. After DX, we immediately got him off kibble and I was keeping his carbs below 4%, but his picky eating was making us change up his food often (he went thru just about every flavor below 4% of FF, TikiCat, Fussie Cat, Weruva Cats in the Kitchen, Weruva originals, Dr. Elsey's, Nulo, Ziwi, the new Stella & Chewy's, and I suspect) ... which eventually led to a nasty case of constipation that required an enema. It was awful (I posted about it
here), and after that, the vet convinced me to put him on Purina DM just to get him on something consistently. It worked, he loved it, but I don't think she realized there are two types of DM, and Perry only eats the one that Dr. Lisa's chart says is 10% as fed. Sigh. It's high, but he loved it, and his BMs were regular on it.
However, when he was running high numbers a few weeks back, I tried giving him the Weruva we still had on hand (2% carb as fed) that he'd eaten somewhat consistently. I've been giving him that when he was high on the curve and DM when he was low. So far, no constipation problems (which I'm very wary of now. I mean I am on poop patrol daily here). That's been working well, but Weruva switched this formula from aspic to gelee, and he rejects the new stuff outright. So I bought every can of tuna and chicken in aspic I could get my hands on and started looking for other options he would eat consistently.
I decided to look for something in the 5-6% range in gravy or sauce, because this kitty laps up the DM sauce like it's the best thing ever. After consulting the chart, I tried the ProPlan True Nature Salmon and Catfish in sauce (6% as fed), and he's been really into that, and his BMs are still regular. Would I love to get him on something lower carb? Absolutely. But we were coating his food in yeast flakes and bonito and FortiFlora (I think I have the 'tricks for getting your cat to eat' sticky memorized) and begging him to eat as he lost weight, and then the enema happened. Now, he's happy with his food, and I'm not worried that he's still losing weight just because he won't eat enough.
We still leave DM out for him overnight, because it's the only food I've tried freezing into a meat popsicle that he'll eat when it thaws. However, the wet food feeder arrives this weekend, and he's eating the ProPlan even when it's cold (a lot of foods we've tried, he only eats it fresh out of the can at room temperature. Refrigerate it and he won't touch it, even if you heat it up), so we'll see where this goes. I'm still on the lookout for something even lower carb, of course, but so far, my picky kitty is staying true to his picky ways.
