AUSTRALIAN food options

[Adam & Krystle]

Hi, just wondering if people can tell me what they are feeding their diabetic cats in Australia?

I have a 9 month old pure bred Devon Rex kitten who developed type 1 diabetes at the age of 6 weeks. He nearly died, but we saved him and kept him.

Currently he is being fed 155 grams of wellness beef and chicken over two meals a day (he's 2.4kg). He receives about 0.5u of lantus twice a day. He was stable until I thought he was too low causing him to get very very hungry. So I lowered his insulin a tiny bit which didn't work, so I raised it a little bit.

Now I'm stuck with the problem that his blood glucose is about 10 on his am shot at 7am but around 17 at 7pm. He gets fed at 4:30am because he wakes us up and wont stop crying until fed, and 5pm for dinner. When I get a chance to test him at 4pm he is normally around 9.

He is so hungry he eats everything including plastic. He almost lives in our sink waiting for us to wash something in there so he can lick the flavor.

So I'm wondering if there is a better food than the wellness beef and chicken in Australia which is readily available?

I'm thinking that his meals are spiking his bg after dinner. And I'd like to move away from wellness because only petbarn stocks it.

Thanks.

 

[Voula]

I have found the Whiskas pouches, the loaf style kitten and senior ones the best for my Lucy in terms of her glucose levels and I also feed some of the Dine desire varieties as treats because they are not a balanced and complete food, and I also feed some Snappy Tom. For low glucose I use Whiskas casserole in the cans with a bit of honey added if needed. The carbs are mostly in the gravy. I used to feed some of the classics foods by Fancy Feast but only the ones with no cereals in them as our classics here are a bit different than the ones in the U.S. I also have fed the Fancy Feast grilled varieties to raise low glucose levels or keep them from dropping when needed. I think some of the Dine in those foil trays and also Nature's Gift are fine too. But each cat reacts differently so you have to try different foods to see what effects they have on your cat but essentially I look for foods with no cereals.

 

[Voula]

Hi again. It is helpful to record the insulin dose on your spreadsheet too. That way if you need dosing advice people can comment with the bemefit of that information but good work on doing the testing.

 

[Bron and Sheba (GA)]

Scroll down 10 posts on this link to find a list of many of the suitable foods available in Australia.
Petbarn has many of the suitable brands and WW and Coles have a few.
I use Weruva brand and they are available from Petbarn only. If you go to their website they will give you all the nutritional info you need including the number of carbs. We can only get the "cats in the kitchen" and ' bff ' categories in the weruva brand here in Australia.
I would suggest you post in the Lantus and Levemir Page here on the forum. Most of the people who use lantus post on that page and you will find some very experienced people there who can help you with the dosing of lantus and getting your kitty sorted out.

http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/threads/food-links.133016/

 

[Laura and Gremlin (GA)]

I feed Gremlin Dine trays (not the tins and only the ones without cereals in the ingredients) as Gremlin hates loaf and pate foods. He used to eat Fancy Feast Classics but they're too much pate for his liking. He eats a lot and is always hungry so he gets many small meals a day. I even come home during much the days I work to test and feed him. He also likes the Cat's In The Kitchen brand but it's much more expensive and only at PetBarn.