hello from Hollywood

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Sony's Dad

Member Since 2015
I would like to say thanks, this site has been invaluable to us and our recently diagnosed cat.

Her name is Sony and she is 13 and was always a free-feeder. maybe i am a horrible person for allowing this, but this ability allowed us to adopt her from a shelter in the first place as we are (was, no longer now) gone too many weekends.

she is now doing better and we are working with the vet to determine the best insulin dosage.
 
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Welcome to FDMB.
We strongly advocate home blood glucose testing with an inexpensive human glucometer and feline-specific reference values, using an effective insulin for cats (ProZinc, Levemir, Lantus, BCP PZI), and feeding over the counter canned or raw low carb food (see Cat Info for more details).
 
Free feeding is fine - as long as it's the right sort of food ;) grazing is good for kitties, especially diabetics, you just need to pull up the bowl two hours before shot time to ensure that the BG test you get isn't food influenced.
 
Hi and welcome

It would be great if you could tell us a little more about your kitty Sonny-what she eats, what insulin you are considering, how she was diagnosed,etc
 
Sony is a 13 year old domestic short hair i adopted as a companion for my now deceased (at 21) Tonkinese named Simon.
She has helped me get over losing Simon and is now MY companion.

My cats were always free feeders and have always been fed pet store food albeit dry food. Canned food was given evenings when we ate dinner.
I have always tried to use high-quality limited-ingredient food and tried to avoid grain, vegetable, and gluten ingredients.

Her goal as a kitten was to get bigger than Simon who was at that point 11 years old, overweight, and on diet Hills and Iams. She preferred his food over hers and she grew up on diet food until she was bigger than Simon. By age 18, aging Simon was normal weight and she was BIG. Not puddle-of-cat big; but large, robust, and strong. Until he passed on, they would chase each other up trees, around the house and patio, and walked up a quarter mile a day.

About half a year after Simon passed on, she began to be finicky and ate less. She Lost some weight and we thought she was picky because she was not competing with another cat and the weight loss was good for her. Then the weight continued to drop past normal and i thought she was too picky for her own good and i tried new foods. More recently, her litter box began to fill up with a lot of urine and i attributed it to the fact she was spending less time outdoors on the patio and choosing to use the litter box. Her stools began to loosen and urine was becoming sticky and i knew something was up.

A recent trip to the Vet led to her diagnosis as Diabetic.
She was put on 2 Units of ProZinc twice a day and a week later, after a day at the Vet obtaining a curve, she was put on 3 Units twice a day.

She is now fed only low-carb canned or wet food twice a day. I am transitioning her to Stella & Chewy's Freeze Dried raw food which she LOVES.
I am feeding her more than recommended amounts as she has lost her back muscle and tail-base fat and really needs to gain weight.

I am began to test her BG with Bayer Contour Next Ez Blood Glucose Monitoring Kit.
 
I'm a lantus user and with lantus it doesn't matter so much that they eat a full meal with the shot. However, I think it's different with ProZinc (I may be wrong, I'm sure someone will correct me if I am). In which case there's still no problem with free feeding but you may want to pull the food up a couple of hours earlier, say at +8 to make sure she's nice and hungry for her shot.

Excellent that you're starting with the home testing, you'll want to make that a pleasurable experience for her so treats are essential after each test - even if it's a fail (usual thinking is three strikes and you're out, try again later). Most people give a low carb treat ( I use raw chicken, others use freeze dried meat) but some give a brushing or whatever else it is that their cat enjoys.

Post for advice if you're having any trouble.

Once you start there is a great spreadsheet in the tech forum that you can use to record the results. You can add it to your signature here so we can see and you will also be able to send the link to your vet so they can access it anytime they like. It really is a fabulous tool.
 
i do make sure she eats a full meal before i give the shot but that hasn't been an issue so far.
if, for any reason, she doesn't eat i will forgo the shot.

i worked slowly up to testing by pinching her ears for no reason, sometimes while she eats or just before a treat. i missed often in the beginning but did not continue past a couple tries.
i discovered it is so much easier in sunlight on the patio that i am getting good at it and now can test indoors.
when i missed i did get some readings of my own BG though!

i had already created a form that posts results to a spreadsheet before i saw the one used here.
this weekend i will program it to parse into the format used here and share the link in my signature.
 
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