New Member 02 Feb 2021

Hi everyone at the cat group. We’re new members and are hoping to connect and learn more about diabetes in cats. Our cat‘s name is “Peck” and he’s a 7 year domestic. He was diagnosed in November 2020 and was put on 3 units of caninsulin twice a day. We’re home testing with Alphatrack 2 and have already done 2 glucose curves. Since he was only diagnosed less than 3 months ago we’re hoping for him to be able to go into remission. We’ve done lot’s of research and have taken the following steps :
After lot’s of trial and error we have finally found some low carb wet/raw food that he likes. One is a raw food called “Country Raw” which only yields 5.2 % of carbs (dry matter). He also likes “Tiki Cat” wet canned food which yields 10% carbs (dry matter). We also try our best to get him to be more active, play with him and take him outside.
For about a month or so things started to improve and the glucose readings became lower, (high 20, low 5). But a few days ago it started to change and the readings became as high as when he was first diagnosed, (high 28, low 19). It’s almost like he’s not responding to the insulin anymore. Anyone has any experience in this kind of situation or can give us any info of what we can do ? We heard that other types of insulin may be better than “caninsulin” ? Should we give him a higher dose of insulin ?
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much, Romi & Helge (from Kamloops, Canada)

 

Hello from the west coast of BC. Caninsulin isn't a very good insulin for cats, good for dogs though. Lantus, Levemir, or Prozinc are longer lasting, much gentler insulins for cats. Your vet also started him on a really high dose, typically we start at 1 unit and work your way up.

Did you change his food recently? What was he on before hand? I'm wondering if you've changed to lower carb food and now that dose is too high. Cats bodies have a defence mechanism we call a "bounce". When they detect blood sugar lower than they are used to, they basically dump stored sugars to bring the numbers up - and what we call the bounce is an over compensation that causes temporary higher numbers. If you'd like more help fine tuning the dosing, you'll see that most of us put our blood sugar tests into a spreadsheet that is in the signature. More information on how we can help you is here.
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By the way, I removed the GA prefix from your subject line, we use it to mean Gone Ahead, or Guardian Angel.

 

Hi there
Thanks so much for your reply and info. It’s a lot to read and digest, so we’ll get going right away !
Best regards, Helge & Romi