Hello to all! New member - Introducing Mami Cat + I need help

[Clarice & Mami Cat]

Hello everyone

My name is Clarice, and I'm new here. I discovered the FDMB on July 26, 2026, and I was so happy and grateful to find this community. I only wish I had found you much sooner.

I would truly appreciate your help. I'm feeling worried about my cat's AMPS numbers and her morning cycle.

My cat, Mami Cat, developed high blood glucose after being treated with corticosteroids for less than a month. Everything started in March 2026.

We've been through many stages and many challenges, as I'm sure many of you have. And here we are... now down to a one-drop dose of insulin.

I have read both the Tilly Protocol and Dr. Rand's article, and we've reached the stage where we're using a drop dose because of her nadirs and the progress she has made toward remission.

I would be incredibly grateful for your thoughts and experience, because I'm feeling a bit lost at this point.

Here is an overview of what has been happening:

• Her nighttime numbers are currently very good. After her PM shot, she generally stays between 50 and 100 mg/dL throughout most of the night. Her PMPS is usually around 130-140 mg/dL. Once the insulin starts working, she spends most of the night very close to 50 mg/dL.
  
  
• However, between about 4:00 and 6:00 a.m., her blood glucose rises very quickly, reaching around 220-250 mg/dL. It used to rise even higher. Previously, my morning dose (approximately 0.1 U, measured by eye) became too strong, so I reduced it to a one-drop dose. Even so, yesterday and today, despite receiving only one drop at AMPS, her glucose dropped below 40 mg/dL.
  
  Here, in the pic, what I am calling her "dawn phenomenon" - could be it some sort of bounce? It has always been like this... since many many weeks. Later, it reaches 250. Less than before.
  
  
• Her drops in the morning are quite big. As soon as I give the morning insulin, her glucose begins to fall almost immediately. There doesn't seem to be any noticeable onset time in the morning. Her glucose starts dropping right away. By about +2:40, I already have to watch her very carefully because she is entering her nadir, and she usually drops a little further around +3.5 to +4.
  
  
• For a long time now, her morning cycles have always dropped faster and more aggressively than her nighttime cycles.
  
  
• Because of this, her nighttime dose has consistently been stronger than her daytime dose. I have had to keep the morning dose smaller because of both the depth of the nadir and the speed of the drop. That has been the only approach that seemed to fit my particular cat.
  
  
• In the past, her nighttime curve seemed almost "stuck" (possibly due to counter-regulatory hormones?), and she would not really come down until after what I call the dawn phenomenon the following morning. More recently, however, she has started dropping during the night at what seems like a more typical time. Even so, the pattern is similar: by about +2.5 she is already below 100 mg/dL, then continues to drop before eventually leveling off.
  
  
• Yesterday (July 7, 2026), for the first time, even her nighttime dose appeared to be too strong. Within a very short time, she reached 42 mg/dL and was still dropping. During the rest of the night, however, her glucose kept going up and then back down again, almost like a seesaw, as though her body was trying to find its balance. I treated the low with food and a small amount of oral glucose, which works well for her. I also gave her some malt paste afterward to help bring her glucose up more quickly. It worked, but later on she dropped back to 53 mg/dL and then spent most of the night in the 50s, with several noticeable ups and downs. Something is clearly changing in her body... improvements... But not so flat ones.
  
  
• So this is the overall pattern: early in the morning, during what I think may be the dawn phenomenon, her glucose rises very quickly. This is the only time of day when she leaves the 100-115 mg/dL range and climbs to around 230-250 mg/dL. Because of that, I continue giving the one-drop dose at AMPS, but even that seems too much, and she drops below 40 mg/dL fairly early in the cycle.
  
  
• This is my current dilemma with her morning cycle. Her AMPS numbers suggest that she still needs insulin because they are around 230-250 mg/dL. However, even a single drop appears to be too much, bringing her below 40 mg/dL. I feed her and give a small amount of oral glucose, and she does well afterward. She then spends the rest of the day between 50 and 100 mg/dL, only rising to around 130 mg/dL shortly before her evening shot.

My questions are:

• Should I stop giving the morning dose altogether and see whether her body can bring that AMPS of 230-250 mg/dL down on its own?
  
  
• Should I continue giving the one-drop dose and simply steer the curve with food so that she doesn't fall below 40 mg/dL? She is a thin cat who eats a high-quality wet food containing about 12% carb, but she has virtually no food spike. The insulin seems to "go right through" the meal without any noticeable rise in glucose. I really don't want to go back to feeding dry food, but at the same time, I don't feel comfortable having to repeatedly use oral glucose to manage her morning cycle.
  
  
• Should I try giving insulin only once a day? One of Dr. Rand's articles mentions once-daily dosing in some cats receiving around 0.5 U, but we are already down to a one-drop dose.
  
  
• Should I try once-daily dosing and perhaps change the timing of that single dose to see how her body responds?
  
  
• I am not comfortable seeing my cat below 40 mg/dL. She becomes quieter and sleepier, although she has never shown severe hypoglycemia symptoms. My glucose meter simply reads "LOW" below 40 mg/dL, so I don't actually know whether she is at 35, 30, or even lower.
  
  
• It took me a great deal of emotional adjustment to become comfortable with numbers below 50 mg/dL. Previously, even seeing values between 50 and 60 made me very anxious.

From what I understand in Dr. Rand's article and Tilly's protocol, an OTJ trial should be considered when the cat spends most of the day between 50 and 100 mg/dL. That certainly describes her. The only exception is that every morning, before her shot, she rises to around 230-250 mg/dL.

Has anyone here experienced something similar, especially what I think may be the dawn phenomenon? Perhaps that's not what it is, but I'm genuinely trying to understand what's happening.

Thank you all so much in advance for your time, your experience, and any guidance you may be able to offer.

@Marje and Gracie @Wendy&Neko Should I post this question in another folder of the Forum? Or... if you have any insights or people I could DM directly about it, I would be very happy to read from you. Many many thanks!

Clarice & Mami Cat

 

[Wendy&Neko]

First I have a couple questions. What type (brand) of blood glucose meter are you using?

What is your current feeding schedule with her? For cats on tiny doses and close but not quite at remission, it can help to feed a small low carb snack around +9 in the cycle. This can trigger the newly working pancreas to work and create some of it's own insulin.

 

[Marje and Gracie]

This is the best place to post right now. We don’t allow advice-giving in PMs as we are a peer-review board.

First, I would shoot the same dose twice a day. It messes with the depot when you shoot different doses. I also wouldn’t shoot once a day at this point. I’d rather see what she does with a drop both cycles and a +9 feeding as Wendy suggested.

There can be several reasons why she’s high at AMPS:
—dawn phenomenon as you’ve mentioned
—loss of duration
—bouncing from low numbers

It almost looks like loss of duration because she rises rapidly at the end of the cycle but then comes back down at onset. She is not getting a se one dip from Lantus either cycle.

How do you know her food is 12% calories from carbs? Using Guaranteed Analysis can result in the wrong numbers. We have had. Few members who used the wrong calculations and thought they were feeding HC food only to realize it was LC and, thus, was not helping the drops.

Also, what is your feeding schedule? I would definitely recommend against dry food. That’s counterproductive to getting her into remission. It could be you aren’t front-loading her food enough for that fast and early a.m. drop. If you can give us an idea of how you are feeding each cycle, that can help us.

 

[Clarice & Mami Cat]

Dear Wendy and Marje,

First of all, thank you so much for your input and comments!

Wendy, I'm still working on making my spreadsheet cleaner and easier to understand, and I still need to fill in a few details... If I write more stuff on it, the correct color dissapears.

Thank you very much - what you wrote already helped me early this morning!

First I have a couple questions. What type (brand) of blood glucose meter are you using?

What is your current feeding schedule with her? For cats on tiny doses and close but not quite at remission, it can help to feed a small low carb snack around +9 in the cycle. This can trigger the newly working pancreas to work and create some of it's own insulin.

Here are some additional pieces of information:

1. I have been using the Libre 1 sensor from the very beginning. I need to scan it every time I want to check Mami Cat's glucose.
   
   
2. When she drops LOW in the morning, I feed her and give her 1 mL of oral glucose. Since this usually happens around +3 or even earlier, I don't wait to see whether she'll come up on her own... Not yet nadir time.
   
   
3. Wendy, what you suggested already helped us today, as I said I was impressed. Early this morning, around 3:30 a.m., I fed her 13 g of her regular wet food. For the first time in more than 3 months, her AMPS was actually quite lower! She was around 70 at +11.5, and then she only rose to 138 by AMPS. Long storu short, I had never shot such a low AMPS preshot number before. I was so happy to see your advice helping us so quickly! At the same time, I was also nervous about shooting that number because she tends to drop very quickly...

I'll explain more about her feeding schedule below.


Marje, thank you so much... My answers are as follows:

This is the best place to post right now. We don’t allow advice-giving in PMs as we are a peer-review board.

First, I would shoot the same dose twice a day. It messes with the depot when you shoot different doses. I also wouldn’t shoot once a day at this point. I’d rather see what she does with a drop both cycles and a +9 feeding as Wendy suggested.

There can be several reasons why she’s high at AMPS:
—dawn phenomenon as you’ve mentioned
—loss of duration
—bouncing from low numbers

It almost looks like loss of duration because she rises rapidly at the end of the cycle but then comes back down at onset. She is not getting a se one dip from Lantus either cycle.

How do you know her food is 12% calories from carbs? Using Guaranteed Analysis can result in the wrong numbers. We have had. Few members who used the wrong calculations and thought they were feeding HC food only to realize it was LC and, thus, was not helping the drops.

Also, what is your feeding schedule? I would definitely recommend against dry food. That’s counterproductive to getting her into remission. It could be you aren’t front-loading her food enough for that fast and early a.m. drop. If you can give us an idea of how you are feeding each cycle, that can help us.

1. Last night I already shot one drop, and that's what I'll continue doing - one drop both AM and PM. At night, one drop isn't very strong: she usually stays between 100 and 150 for most of the cycle, although she may still reach around 70 or even a little lower later on. I believe this will continue to improve over time. It also allows me to breathe a little, because her previous PM dose became too strong.
   
   
2. Sometimes she has a dip before PMPS, and sometimes she doesn't. Yesterday evening, she did.
   
   
3. After feeding her at +9, her AMPS was so much better! That made me think the problem may not have been a loss of duration after all, but rather that she had been fasting for too many hours overnight. I had never considered that before. Thank you, Wendy. I'm definitely going to read and learn more about it.
   
   
4. I'm from Brazil, and I'm feeding her the best low carb food I've been able to find here that she likes. Maybt it is medium carb, but it causes no spikes in her BG. It has about 12% carbohydrates (dry matter basis). The food is Farmina Matisse Mousse, lamb flavor. I used ChatGPT to calculate the carb percentage correctly on a dry matter basis, and then I double-checked the calculation with Gemini using the same formula. Both gave me exactly the same result. If you'd like, I can post the complete nutritional composition here. As far as I know, this mousse isn't sold in the U.S...
   
   
5. And now I come to what I think is the most important part: her feeding schedule.

Right now, I give her 23g of Matisse Mousse at AMPS. About two hours later (sometimes a little earlier), I give another 20 g. Two hours after that, another 20 g. That's her morning routine.

RECENTLY, whenever her BG reaches LOW, I give her about 15g of Hill's a/d wet food and 1 mL of oral glucose. I actually think Hill's a/d isn't particularly high in carbs either.

If it were up to Mami Cat, 23g at AMPS wouldn't be enough—she would happily eat more. That made me start wondering whether I've simply been underfeeding her.

After reading both of your messages and thinking about everything you said, today I decided to try something different.

At AMPS, I gave her 25g of the Matisse Mousse plus 5g of (almost raw) filet mignon. My goal was to see whether the meat could help support her curve.

She still dropped early again, but once the filet mignon started taking effect, her BG came up slightly and stayed stable for about an hour. It kind of saved me for one hour. I had been considering trying 10g next time, because 5g really isn't much. She's very used to eating filet mignon and loves it. And it does support me with the BG curve, when I needed it in the past.

At +2.5 she was 41 and going down, so I needed to intervene again. I gave 1 mL of glucose and some Hill's a/d, and now I'm waiting to see what happens.(Apparently, after the short rise, she got stable around 53).

One thing I've been thinking about is that 1 mL of glucose is such a tiny amount. Am I wrong? If I can find a food that reliably has the same effect, maybe I won't need to give glucose anymore. That's why I want to experiment with giving the meat about two hours earlier.

From my previous observations, when I give 15 g or more of filet mignon, it starts affecting her glucose about 1½ to 2 hours later. I've tested that several times. Today, with only 5 g, the effect came sooner.

Even when her BG drops into the 40s, I'm not using high-carb food. I simply give either her regular wet food or Hill's a/d, together with 1 mL of oral glucose.

In the afternoon, she eats another two 20 g meals, with a longer interval between them - one shortly after lunchtime and another around 5:00 p.m. At PMPS, she eats another 20 g. During the evening, she has two more 20 g meals. After that, when I go to bed, she doesn't eat anything else until morning.

From now on, though, I'll be adding the +9 meal overnight.

Until now, she spent the entire night fasting. Thanks to both of you, I learned to offer a meal at +9 during the night, and at least today it seems to have made a real difference.

I'm going to continue experimenting with giving her a little more filet mignon and see how her curves respond. Since today's AMPS started much lower than usual, her glucose also dropped earlier than usual. Hopefully I'll be able to find a solution for this.

When I saw a SS of a sweet cat here surfing so balanced with one drop, I was so impressed and happy to see it is possible... One drop... Without taking the cat to super low numbers... It can be done... Wow...

Do you have any recommendations for a feeding schedule that helps support a smoother BG curve? I think that's an area where I should improve.

Thank you for supporting me. I have faith that I will find a solution. I have been praying a lot and I trust God and Jesus very much. It has been really a journey for me. In the beginning, I was somewhat in shock. I was very scared too. Little by little, things got better. God gave me more and more peace.

 

[Red & Rover (GA)]

Hill's a/d

According to

• MEXICO AND ARGENTINA FOOD CHARTS data complied by Veronica & Babuchiri (Jan 25, 2020)

a/d is 9.58% carbs.