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mrsklink

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Hi. My name is Cristy and my kitty Rory was dx about 6 weeks ago. We started him on pills, but those didn't help enough. He's been on insulin since 11/9/11 and is doing better. He just got bumped up to 2 units yesterday. The shots don't seem to bother him at all. They actually bother my hubby and 3 year old daughter more!
He was on Science Diet w/d (I think, the weight control one)dry and half a can of Fancy Feast until the diagnosis. Then the vet switched him to the Purina dietary dry food. In an attempt to start reducing the amount of dry food, I started feeding him half a can of Fancy Feast in the am and another half at night. The thing that concerns me the most with all this is that he still seems so hungry! We have 2 other cats: Sunny and Tigger. Sunny is fine, happy to have a second serving of canned food. Tigger has not adjusted to the new canned food routine and is eating more dry food and then gaining too much weight. So Rory cleans up after Tigger and Tigger gets fat on Purina!
I've been reading some of the posts here since his diagnosis. I think this will be a good place for support and questions answered, since it seems like all my questions come AFTER the vet closes!

Cristy
(signature to come :) )
 
Hi Cristy and Rory,

Yes, wet lo carb food is best for every cat, but especially diabetics. A vet explains why here: www.catinfo.org If you could get your tribe onto all wet, it would improve everyone's health. HOWEVER, we would encourage you not to feed all wet lo carb until you are testing at home - especially with the dose increase. When we switched Oliver from dry to wet, his numbers went down 100 points overnight. If we hadn't been testing, we would have overdosed him.

Unregulated diabetic cats are very hungry. The food is not being used by their bodies efficiently. As soon as he starts getting the diet and insulin working together, he will be less hungry.

What insulin is Rory on? What is the dose?

Can we teach you to test at home? It is the best way to keep Rory safe, being sure that the dose you are planning to give is safe and seeing how the insulin is working during the cycle. Here's how we do it: Video for hometesting Cats are often stressed at the vet (strange noises, smells, other animals) and stress raises bg levels. So dose determined by vet numbers can be too high once the kitty gets home and relaxes.

Reading other threads is a great way to learn about this sugar dance, as are the FAQs: FAQs

We would love to help you help your Rory!
 
Hi Christy and Rory!
Welcome to FDMB. Sue has already touched on the food issue. Eventually you will want to feed Rory nothing but low-carb canned food. If the Fancy Feast canned you are using says "classic" on the can, you're already using a great low carb variety.
Here are links to food charts that we all try to go by. The FF classics are listed on the "old" chart. On the charts, you'll see lots of numbers, but the most important one for right now is the "carbs" column. We try to use foods that are less than 10% carbs, and the lower 5-7% ones if possible.
As Sue said, do NOT make a complete switch until you are able to home test Rory's blood glucose. The change in diet will drop his BG levels all by itself, and you will want to make sure that you see what those levels are like in case his dose of insulin needs to be dropped somewhat. That would be the safest way to proceed.

Good news - when your vet told you to use Purina DM instead of the w/d food, that was a good thing. The w/d food has a carb content of 37%, The Purina DM is only 13%.

The bad news - 13% is still too high. Plus it is dry food, which for a bunch of other reasons beyond "carbs" is not good for Rory or any other kitty really. The catinfo.org link that Sue gave you will explain why that is true.

If you can answer the questions that Sue asked, we can all begin to help you with this, and get Rory back to feeling good!
Links to food info:
http://binkyspage.tripod.com/dryfood.html
http://binkyspage.tripod.com/CanFoodNew.html
http://binkyspage.tripod.com/CanFoodOld.html
Carl in SC
 
Thanks for the warm welcome :)

Rory has always been on FF wet food. I had been feeding the girls Nutro and he refused to eat it! When he got his diagnosis, I checked out the food lists here and was happy to see his favorite food on it :-D I just switched everyone over to it to make life easier. I would love to get everyone off the dry food too, after reading all the info on diabetes. We've been working with 3 of the main vets at our clinic (depending on who is available when Hubby can bring him in for the BG check), and I've talked with each of them about diet and diabetes. They all have said to get him regulated first, and then we can play more with his diet. When I last spoke with the vet (yesterday), I asked about home testing and she said it's not a bad idea, but we can chat about it a little further down the road. I think we'll probably get to that after the holidays. He just gets stressed going to the vet and I'm getting tired of paying for the 15 minute clinic visit!

He is currently on 2 units of Lantus, twice a day. His BG started around 450, we got it down to 220 (somewhere near that) and then yesterday it was back up to 350. So they bumped him up from 1 unit to 2. He goes back next week.

This is a whole new world for us. I've dealt with brain tumors (not a good outcome :cry: ), internal parasites (the kitten left a pile of poo as big as her behind the TV!!), kitty colds, and bladder infections in my 13 years of kitty-parenthood. I know we can deal with this and help Rory stay healthy....but boy! What a new world it is!!

Cristy
 
You might look at the starred topics on the Lantus Support forum. There is quite a bit of research into how Lantus should be dosed (jumping up a whole unit at a time is not recommended) and how it works best in cats. viewforum.php?f=9

We would encourage you to start hometesting ASAP. Shooting blind is dangerous. Just reading some of the threads on this page illustrate that. Sev got 76 for a number this morning. If he had shot his normal 1.5 units, his kitty would have hypoed.
 
When the vet got those numbers, were they just single blood checks? Did they do a fructosamine test? Single spot checks at the vet's office are not the best way to determine dosing levels.

He just gets stressed going to the vet and I'm getting tired of paying for the 15 minute clinic visit!
Click to expand...
Most pets do get stressed by the vet trip. Thing is, stress can elevate BG numbers. So those numbers could reflect that stress.

I would say that until you start home testing, you might not want to up that dose.... His BG is very likely to be a lot lower once you have him feeling safe at home, and raising the dose could push those numbers too far down.

Carl
 
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