Advice please!

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Danielle Hrubiak

Danielle Hrubiak

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So I have gotten a bit of suggestions and opinions from a few people on here so far (and I am very grateful and appreciative of them)...but I was wondering if there happens to be a Vet on here that could comment? I am getting completely conflicting suggestions/advice/instructions from my vet office in comparison to what a lot of people on here do and say. I need to know if my vet is wrong/uninformed etc?

What is the proper way to feed a cat on prozinc? Vet nurse is FIRM about only twice at injection times. She made me feel awful when i told her i was allowing for a very small snack after her insulin shot. I nearly cried as she shook her head in disappointment. My girl wants to eat a little in between her meals. Not much, just a top off shortly after her meal-roughly an hour or so.
-She also said 1 can of food per meal is way too much. That would be 3 oz of FF classics twice daily. According to the chart they are roughly 90 calories per can-give or take a few. I read 4-6 oz is a rough avg of food per day. Abby is currently about 7-8 lbs and small framed. She lost a lot of muscle mass and a few lbs (which she needed to lose a few anyhow) from this disease. I was trying to plump her back up a bit by allowing her to eat as much as she wanted at meal time--which was about a can, ESP considering she's not regulated yet and not properly utilizing the food she does take in. So I figured she needed a little more. Can someone tell me how much to feed if this is too much? And can I get any professional advice on feeding schedule? What is the best way to feed while using prozinc? The lady said I am messing up her numbers (I tried to do an at home curve) by allowing food in between shots. I'm so confused and I don't know what to do or what is best? I literally just want to cry.
 
Hi Danielle, I am sorry this issue is causing you such angst. I am not a vet. (There is only one vet who sometimes posts on the site but it is not often. We advocate her website (www.catinfo.org) and she is complimentary toward our protocols. You might check her website and read what she says on feeding.)

My humble opinion is that, at first, a diabetic cat is literally starving as her body is not processing the food well. I advocate feeding such a cat more than you might usually (my non diabetic cat has 2 cans of Fancy Feast daily and maintains his weight; I fed my diabetic cat 2.5 to 3 cans until he had been on the insulin awhile and was regulated. Then I lowered his intake as he was overweight). There are two schools of thought about schedule. Some people feed twice daily. A lot of people, especially at first when they are so hungry, feed every 3 hours or so (same amount of food, just divided into smaller amounts). There is thought than small frequent meals help support the pancreas as it is trying to heal.

I have to admit the argument for restricting food reminds me of the days when we were told babies should cry themselves out and should only be allowed to feed when it was the "correct" time. Always seemed cruel to me.

Your vet isn't there when you feed your kitty and can't regulate how much and when you feed. Your are your cat's advocate and if your gut says she is starving, feed more. My vet and I didn't agree on food brands. She wanted me to buy prescription. I just fed what I wanted (Fancy Feast) and we didn't discuss it.

Once your kitty's body learns to use the insulin and she is less ravenous, you can lower the amount fed - no damage done. One thing that might help is to add warm water to the food and mix it up so it seems like gravy. It gives them more to 'eat" and seems to satisfy them more.

Yes, extra food can change bg levels. The trick is to monitor at home with testing and see what happens over the course of a cycle. Then you have that information to use in terms of dosing, if necessary. But that is down the road, when you have data on when and how the insulin works. For now, If she were mine, I would feed her more and more often until she feels better.
 
Think of it this way:
When you feed a large meal, it all hits the stomach pretty quickly and starts digesting. Within 2 hours the glucose is increasing, a lot. We call that a meal spike. The bigger the meal, the bigger the spike can be.
ProZinc, on the other hand, is gradually working over the 12 hours after the shot. It does NOT have a big effect all it once.
So what happens? Even with the ProZinc on board, there is still a big meal spike and it slowly drops as the ProZinc works. This means the glucose levels can be pretty high for a while until the ProZinc handles it.

Consider what happens if you feed smaller meals more frequently. The meal spike isn't as big and there are a couple of them. This is good, because the ProZinc ha some time to work on each of them and reduce the glucose before the next mini-meal. Overall, the glucose never goes up quite as high as feeding one big meal. Plus, if your cat needs to gain weight, smaller more frequent meals prevent over-stuffing and vomiting. For the cat losing weight, it keeps the cat from getting too hungry. This is a plus in either of those situations, too.

Prove it to yourself: Take a day, meal feed, and do a curve. Take another day, feed 2-3 mini-meals, and do a curve. Graph them (Google Sheets can do it). What do you see?

 
I've been in the "is my vet wrong or are you all wrong" boat before. I know how confusing this is! It's hard (and I mean it) to think that your vet might be giving you incorrect information. Remember, though, that your vet treats all different types of animals for all different types of diseases. He can't be an expert on feline diabetes (well he could I guess, but it's unlikely...most vets treat so many animals they aren't specializing in one thing). He's giving you the info he has...but the people on this board deal with FD day in and day out. They don't just research it and treat it, they LIVE it. So they just have more knowledge of it. It's not that your vet isn't a good vet, just that here on FDMB, there are tons of people who have dealt with this disease practically and so they have knowledge and experience behind what they say. That's what helped me when I was first trying to treat FD and my vet told me conflicting info. And hey! What I read on here worked. I hope it helps you!
 
You all make perfect sense. I am not going to allow this vet to put doubt in my head anymore that what you all are saying and doing is a bunch of hocus pocus. I am calling a cat specific clinic tomorrow to set up a consultation (if they're willing) to see what her treatment plan for Abilene would be. I hope I don't hear--"well we need to see the cat first." I don't see why, besides wanting the $75 exam fee. Hopefully they will be willing to just look at all of my paperwork and give me a good idea of a plan of action for her.
 
It can be worth a paid consult if you take all the labs and test data for review.

If you're just interviewing for a new vet, then use the interview questions in my signature.
 
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