Hi,
My name is Willie and I live in Belgium with my 2 indoor cats Zorro and Tricky, both 8,5 years old.
Tricky has been diagnosed with diabetes end of August. After losing a month (due to a vet who didn't know anything at all about diabetes), I started her on Lantus. Her sheet is here :https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...E5wN3l1a3o3ODdBV0laODRxaHRpZ3c&hl=en_US#gid=8. The unit is mmol/l iso. mg/dl, so you should multiply by 18, or if you know that yellow = below renal limit, that's maybe enough.
Short history since diagnosis : first Tricky lost weight till 4,3 kg, then she gained weight up to 6,5 kg, now she's about 6,3. She used to be 4,9 kg before she was sick, and at 4,3 she felt "sharp" to the touch, so I think 5 kg is acceptable for her.
So :
September : lost month due to false start.
October : started on Lantus with tight protocol and home measurements. She gained weight again, insulin raised from 1,5 to 5,25 units, but still above the renal limit all the time.
November : started to have better values at 9 (!) units BID, but I got impatient, went to the vet for AB for her teeth (light infection of the gums), but she reacted very badly to the AB (stopped eating, diarrhea), first hypo values and panic, stopped AB.
December : started raising Lantus again from 5 to 8,5 units BID, making good progress in values, but she gained 1 kg weight :S
January : could slowly start giving a little less insulin, to 7,75 BID, and by the end of January was very happy : normal values all day, litter really normal again for the first time.
All this time I fed her Applaws Chicken dry food, 13,5% carbohydrates. She's been a dry food addict for a long time : although Zorro gets wet food twice a day, Tricky never touches it.
Then I started a new bag of Applaws (big bags of 7,5 kg), and madam decided she was not going to eat that anymore. Out of the blue. Result : tried every type of food I had in the house, and the Whiskas dry food that had been sitting there from before she was sick, was the only thing she would eat. 47,5 % carbo hydrates :S
Since then I visited another vet (who knows a bit more about diabetes, but still confuses cats with dogs) and gave her AB again for her teeth. Plan is to eventually get her teeth cleaned, but the new vet doesn't like to do it now when she's not regulated at all, and also she stopped eating again when I started the AB, so he's worried he can't give her AB. But that got better after I stopped giving it to her on cream, so maybe she just reacted to the lactose.
And now I need advice. I want to change her diet away again from the evil Whiskas, but if I mix even 3 kibbles of Applaws in it, she won't eat it. Tried to mix with a somewhat less evil dry brand yesterday, and during the day she eat it, but then overnight she didn't eat anything, so she dropped from 383 last night to 34 this morning :S Which also proves to me how evil the dry food is if not eating for 12 hrs has this much impact.
So this morning I found this link : http://www.catinfo.org/?link=felinediabetes and others, and now I'm thinking about trying to get her on wet food, at least partially. But I don't know how to handle it in combination with the insulin. I halved the 5 units she was getting (and which are not enough when she eats Whiskas) this morning. She's eating some wet food now, which is already good, and some evil dry food as well. But it's hard to monitor exactly how much she's eating of which.
I'm also on a Dutch forum for diabetic cats, where I get the comment that I'm irresponsible, and experimenting on my cat, and I should just keep giving her the evil dry food if that's what she wants. But I'm scared what will happen then if I have to raise the insulin to 7 or 9 or even higher, and then she suddenly decides she doesn't like that brand either anymore :S
Apart from all this, Tricky has been doing fine the past few days, apart from the heavy drinking/peeing again. She's social and active. Oh, and she's a "free feeder" : she only eats a small amount every time, Zorro as well, which will make complete transation to wet food not easy.
Sorry for the long story, but I just want to know if trying to change her diet is a good or a bad plan, and if any of you have done it with a cat on (much) insulin, and how to know how much insulin to give. Or should I try to regulate her again first on the evil dry food ? Or let the vet do her teeth first, if I can persuade him ?
Thanks for your ideas.
My name is Willie and I live in Belgium with my 2 indoor cats Zorro and Tricky, both 8,5 years old.
Tricky has been diagnosed with diabetes end of August. After losing a month (due to a vet who didn't know anything at all about diabetes), I started her on Lantus. Her sheet is here :https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...E5wN3l1a3o3ODdBV0laODRxaHRpZ3c&hl=en_US#gid=8. The unit is mmol/l iso. mg/dl, so you should multiply by 18, or if you know that yellow = below renal limit, that's maybe enough.
Short history since diagnosis : first Tricky lost weight till 4,3 kg, then she gained weight up to 6,5 kg, now she's about 6,3. She used to be 4,9 kg before she was sick, and at 4,3 she felt "sharp" to the touch, so I think 5 kg is acceptable for her.
So :
September : lost month due to false start.
October : started on Lantus with tight protocol and home measurements. She gained weight again, insulin raised from 1,5 to 5,25 units, but still above the renal limit all the time.
November : started to have better values at 9 (!) units BID, but I got impatient, went to the vet for AB for her teeth (light infection of the gums), but she reacted very badly to the AB (stopped eating, diarrhea), first hypo values and panic, stopped AB.
December : started raising Lantus again from 5 to 8,5 units BID, making good progress in values, but she gained 1 kg weight :S
January : could slowly start giving a little less insulin, to 7,75 BID, and by the end of January was very happy : normal values all day, litter really normal again for the first time.
All this time I fed her Applaws Chicken dry food, 13,5% carbohydrates. She's been a dry food addict for a long time : although Zorro gets wet food twice a day, Tricky never touches it.
Then I started a new bag of Applaws (big bags of 7,5 kg), and madam decided she was not going to eat that anymore. Out of the blue. Result : tried every type of food I had in the house, and the Whiskas dry food that had been sitting there from before she was sick, was the only thing she would eat. 47,5 % carbo hydrates :S
Since then I visited another vet (who knows a bit more about diabetes, but still confuses cats with dogs) and gave her AB again for her teeth. Plan is to eventually get her teeth cleaned, but the new vet doesn't like to do it now when she's not regulated at all, and also she stopped eating again when I started the AB, so he's worried he can't give her AB. But that got better after I stopped giving it to her on cream, so maybe she just reacted to the lactose.
And now I need advice. I want to change her diet away again from the evil Whiskas, but if I mix even 3 kibbles of Applaws in it, she won't eat it. Tried to mix with a somewhat less evil dry brand yesterday, and during the day she eat it, but then overnight she didn't eat anything, so she dropped from 383 last night to 34 this morning :S Which also proves to me how evil the dry food is if not eating for 12 hrs has this much impact.
So this morning I found this link : http://www.catinfo.org/?link=felinediabetes and others, and now I'm thinking about trying to get her on wet food, at least partially. But I don't know how to handle it in combination with the insulin. I halved the 5 units she was getting (and which are not enough when she eats Whiskas) this morning. She's eating some wet food now, which is already good, and some evil dry food as well. But it's hard to monitor exactly how much she's eating of which.
I'm also on a Dutch forum for diabetic cats, where I get the comment that I'm irresponsible, and experimenting on my cat, and I should just keep giving her the evil dry food if that's what she wants. But I'm scared what will happen then if I have to raise the insulin to 7 or 9 or even higher, and then she suddenly decides she doesn't like that brand either anymore :S
Apart from all this, Tricky has been doing fine the past few days, apart from the heavy drinking/peeing again. She's social and active. Oh, and she's a "free feeder" : she only eats a small amount every time, Zorro as well, which will make complete transation to wet food not easy.
Sorry for the long story, but I just want to know if trying to change her diet is a good or a bad plan, and if any of you have done it with a cat on (much) insulin, and how to know how much insulin to give. Or should I try to regulate her again first on the evil dry food ? Or let the vet do her teeth first, if I can persuade him ?
Thanks for your ideas.
