New here, introducing my kitty Bella and myself

Status
Not open for further replies.
Bellas_mom_2020

Bellas_mom_2020

Member Since 2024
Hey everyone my name is Jennifer and I live in NJ with my husband David and our sweet & sassy Bengal Bella. Bella is newly diagnosed, we just found out this past Saturday. Definitely overwhelming at first especially with all the info we were trying to navigate through. I have type 2 diabetes so having experience with it has helped a little. Bella has been so good these past 2.5 days with checking her BG + getting her insulin.

The vet told us to do 1 unit but I’ve been very hesitant and have been doing 0.5. We are working on transitioning her to Fancy Feast. We made the mistake of stopping her other food completely and switching her to Tiki - a no carb food. She ate it once and then wouldn’t touch it, then we tried to give her FF and she took a few bites and refused it (she can be a little stubborn) so a member recommended slowly transitioning her to FF so that’s what we are doing.

Me and my hubby hope that with diet we can get her in remission quickly since we caught this so early. Any recommendations and help is always welcomed as the 3 of us try to manage this change in our lives. I attached her spreadsheet.



https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yLIqy1uFfJh0cZztMuSJESzpDTH7oICgabommZsztqk/edit
 
Hello and welcome to you and your super sweet girl.

Were you feeding the dry or wet form of Wholehearted before? I haven't seen the carb% for it, but the ingredients don't look bad in the wet food, other than too many options with fish. Just wondering why it was recommended to switch to FF. A few tips here on how to transition foods: Transitioning your cat from dry to wet food

You might want to put notes in the Remarks column of the spreadsheet when you make any changes that might impact her BG (blood glucose), such as changing food, adding medications, etc.
 
We were feeding her both, we stopped the dry food when she went for her regular exam in the end of January and her glucose was high. I’m having trouble calculating the carbs in the wholehearted. I tried using a carb calculator but there’s no ash listed so when I don’t put ash it comes to 19%. No one told us to switch, we did it on our own because we thought low to no carbs was better for her. The ingredients aren’t bad except the tapioca starch. Bella loves fish, will eat turkey and sometimes chicken wet food. I feel so lost because she doesn’t like the FF. Tonight she took a few bites (we mixed Wholehearted + some FF). I feel like she’s mad at us for trying to switch her foods. I just feel like I’m failing her and it’s making me stress which is making my blood sugar messed up and making me sick.
 
Some cats do better on slightly higher carbs, up to 10% carbs. Many of us feed in the 4-6% carb range. Getting rid of the dry food is a good first step. Once she's eating the canned regularly, you can look at seeing if you need to change it. You probably should change to a diet that doesn't always have fish in it.
 
She usually eats the canned food without an issue but tonight I don’t know what’s wrong. She was by her bowl around 6:00 to eat and when we went to feed her she took a few bites and that was is.
 
Hi Jen and "extra sweet" Bella! So glad to see you over here from the Facebook group!

Bella's having a nice cycle today! As you lower the carbs in her food, she may not need insulin (wouldn't that be great?)

She may not be as hungry as you're used to because her BG isn't as high. Insulin is like a key and on every cell in the body there's a lock. Without insulin to open those "locks", no matter how much the cat eats, the glucose from the food can't get into the cells so they keep screaming "we're hungry".

Also, with Lantus, they don't need to eat a certain amount before shooting. Since it doesn't usually start to "kick in" for about 2 hours, Bella can take her time eating.

Getting a +2 is a good test to get because it can give you an idea of where she might be going later in the cycle too. (with some cats, the +3 is better). For a normal cycle, we'd expect the +2 to be about the same as the Preshot. If it's higher, they could be starting a bounce so you can usually take a break and catch up on some sleep but if the +2 is lower, that can be your "early warning" that she might be dropping more later in the cycle and you may need to stay up or set an alarm to get more tests in.

Hang in there! You can do this!
 
I feel a little better reading what you wrong but I still worry (I have such bad anxiety-and worrying/overthinking is my downfall ) she ate all her morning food, she finished at 9:30 and just a few bites of her 6:30 meal. We wanted to see if she was just being stubborn and not eating because we’re trying to switch her foods and offered her 1 treat (a greenie which I know has carbs but it’s all we have in the house right now) and she licked it and smelled it first then ate it-like she didn’t trust us. She’s too smart for our tricks ‍♀️.

Today I was off so I was able to check her +2 and then again at +6 but I’m back to work tomorrow so hopefully my husband can get a +2 (he’s still learning how to test and gets nervous). I do feel like we’re moving in the right direction but that worrying part of me feels like I’m still not doing it right. But I guess that comes with time. I appreciate everyone’s help thus far.
 
Welcome Jen, David and Bella.
Waving to you from Lyndhurst New Jersey :cat: Right by Giant Stadium
I happen to come across this link about the Wholehearted wet food when I put it in our search option up top
Take a look ,tap in this link

https://felinediabetes.com/FDMB/threads/petco-new-food-wholehearted-carb-content-ok.212592/

Also found this at
https://cats.com/wholehearted-cat-food-review which says
Hi Mallory. For the wet food, you stated it’s low carb at less than 10%, but in the charts you made it says 18.75% on a dry matter basis. Can you please let me know which is accurate? Is this a low carb wet food? Thanks!!

REPLY
  1. cropped-Small-pfp-44x44.jpg
    Mallory CrustaPost authorOct 18, 2021 at 10:19 pm
    Amanda, the charts and the percentages given in the article were calculated using different methods. In addition to removing moisture, I removed fiber and ash from the equation as well. This made my percentages slightly lower than those shown in the chart. However, both of these values were calculated based on the guaranteed analysis, which means that they’re prone to inaccuracy. According to the company, the food is 3% carbohydrates on an as-fed basis, which translates to about 17% carbohydrates on a dry matter basis. I’m about to update the article now that I’ve found this information. Apologies for the confusion.
Me-As far as I know we go by the as fed for carbs
 
Last edited:
Hey fellow New Jersian!!!

This is exactly why I get confused with the dry matter and wet matter and as fed. When I calculated some of the flavors I saw that the carbs were not bad as well as the ingredients. It does have tapioca starch but it still it’s around 3.5% and some of them have less. Bella loves the food and enjoys eating it. We gave it to her this morning and she’s devouring it because last night she refused to eat the mix of wholehearted and FF. She woke us up around 4:00 because she was hungry. It’s not making her glucose elevated so I feel like she should be able to continue eating it.
 
If you have other cats besides Bella, work on switching all of them over to the same diet. This will help keep Bella from cheating and also reduce the chances of any of the others from developing feline diabetes.

Bella is beautiful :cat:
 
Aww thank you ☺️ I’m biased but she is pretty cute. We don’t have any other cats, as much we would love to we honestly can’t afford another pet with all her medical bills + I don’t think she would like sharing her fur parents with another cat
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top