HELP-cat gorged on dry food

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barbp

barbp

Member Since 2014
Let Berkeley out of cage around 8 am-took car to mechanic around 8:15 and home by 8:30. To my horror I found Berkeley had knocked over the dry food container (16 lb bag) and was eating madly as I walked in the door. Did this just happen or had she been eating for the last 15 minutes?

I caught her and did morning testing -477 at 8:44- and gave her the lantus shot 1.5 units-offered her some of the Fancy feast fish and shrimp and she was not interested so it makes me think she had eaten LOTS of dry food.

At 11:35 I tested her (I have her loose in the garage with water and litter box) and the monitor read HIGH (over 600). Booklet says to call health care professional.

DO I call the vet and rush her in, just wait it out till the carbs get digested? She is alert and walking around (actually seems a bit more active than normal). Just read about comas caused by dehydration due to sugar level rising
 
around noon now and vet called and said to carry on normally -do not change lantus dosage and that in 24 hours her body should have digested the forbidden food and she should be back on schedule-

I will keep on with the blood glucose monitoring-think 5 hours is supposed to be the nadir (low?) point so hoping she will be back on the monitor by then-
 
Nothing really you can do. Berkeley will likely have a high PM BG and just give the normal does if he eats normally. He may not want to eat. That has happened to my MurrFee. He ate over 4 oz of dog treats, heate open the bag.
 
thanks Larry-I never thought about them biting open the bag. I was counting myself lucky that the cat happens to be declawed, figured she could not shred the bag. It is quite strange-I have all these former ferals (19 of them currently) and all of them crave the canned foods! And her is Berkeley getting FANCY FEAST!, and yet she wants that dried up purina cat chow.
 
Short of popping by the vet and getting a shot of short-acting insulin, you just wait it out.

Our mantra:
Better too high for a day than too low for a moment.
The former takes time to cause problems; the latter can kill quickly.
 
the good news is Berkeley, although she showed no interest in breakfast wet food, by 2 pm she was raring to eat her wet 2 pm can and ate her 9 pm can also- her readings, were

AMPS 477 Dry food gorge occurred 1/2 hour prior to the AMPS
+3 HI
+8 567 (about 3 hrs after normal wet food)
PMPS 564 normal dinner eaten well after this shot

so it would appear there is a downward trend. Have to say. she looked very happy after her pigfest. She hopped un into a chair and took a nap with a smile on her face! I guess this is the first time in awhile that she has felt full. Poor thing.

She is caged for several reasons. I have 19 cats scattered around the house. Some stay in one area cause they are territorial, others sneak into other areas without permission and some are allowed to move from one area to another cause they get along with everyone and have no special needs.

Berkeley was trapped last June and after finding she was spayed and declawed I could not put her out again but she was quite hissy and snarly with other cats and also had developed a case of ringworm. So she lived in the garage with the trapped recuperating ferals. This lasted all winter but when she got the diabetes diagnosis I had to bring her in the house and caged her initially, as I do every new cat. When I let her out, her size intimidated the main house bully, who is an eight pound (plump not muscles) piece of work! So she actually got along with the 4 main house cats-in the sense that she ignored them and they pretty much ignored her except for Bully Janey who stalked her.

But she is also on a diet, so even switching the main house to Fancy feast low carb cans, I found that she was eating way too much (grossly even scarfing any regurgitated food by the others). And if she walked away from her dish, Janey was right there to sneak any food. So I caged her at meal times to get the proper food in her and also to get fresh urine from her for the ketone/sugar strip testing.

And, I allow the cellar cats to roam the house at night if they wish. But Berkeley does not get along with two of these cats and also they have some Royal Canin dry food in the cellar for a cat with bladder stones and one with bladder spasms. Goodness knows what would happen while I slept.

Lastly, the upstairs killer cat is behind a very tall dog gate. He has arthritis and does not jump it. Berkeley does not jump that high and does not seem to climb the grids. But she goes up the stairs when she is loose and the two have a snarling fight (with the gate between them). Very disconcerting to awaken to this horrendous noise.

Long answer as to why she is caged and it is hard to get her out (cause since she has been out, she wants MORE) and yet make sure there is no food out for her to eat, and yet have enough food for the others to eat when she is not out. Lots of juggling for me.
 
barbp said:
... Royal Canin dry food in the cellar for a cat with bladder stones and one with bladder spasms. ...
Click to expand...

On a side note, the cat that gets bladder stones might be much better off with canned food as the water helps dilute any sediment so it passes out the urethra. See Cat Info for Dr Pierson's take on feline urinary tract issues.
 
End of this story is that come the next morning, her AMPS was 422 (historically one of her lower readings!). She ate half of her breakfast can and is now sleeping in the sun.
 
Barb, It sounds like you are running your own little kitty rescue out of your home! Bless you for all the effort you put out for each of your 19 cats.

Hope we continue to see a downward trend in the BG readings for Berkeley.
 
well, Deb , it is not that I am running a rescue, not on purpose! I do trap neuter return for the feral cats and out township has finally gotten a free program for the residents. The cats get free surgery, vaccines and flea meds and I do the trapping, transporting and recuperating and photography!

A lot of these cats are judgment errors on my part. In the beginning, the cats were more in the order of hospice patients. The vet would tell me that cat had x, y, or z and could not be released. But that usually meant the poor cat died within a few years. Bittersweet, but no accumulation.

But then I tried my hand at socialization and frankly, it seemed that one kitten from a litter would not become nice. This meant another cat for me, and a young one, cause how can you release a little thing of 5 months to a spot where none of the other cats knew it and the poor thing likely had no memory of the location since I trapped it 2 or three months ago.

And others a nursing Moms, who after 7 weeks of my being there all the time were pretty tame but had lost their feeders and I had no where to release her, Berkeley Girl, who the adoption group agreed to take cause of her declawed state, but now with diabetes, she has to be fostered by me and under regulation, either by insulin or food before they will advertise her as a special needs cat.

And since I am now a senior citizen, I have to concern myself about their care should something happen to me. Never envisioned all this when I agreed to trap my first cat back in 1999!

I think that Long Island was one of the last places to have trap neuter return programs. California I believe. started it all, back in the late 70s.
 
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