New Member: Hello (April 3rd, 2021)

Hello all,

I am Andrew B. and I live in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. I have a cat who's name is Max and he is 10 years old and is a male flame-point Siamese.

Max was diagnosed with diabetes in November 2020. He was prescribed 2 units every 12 hours of insulin by my local vet. We did several glucose curves and he went up to 4 units per shot. However, he recently had to be hospitalized for about a week due to not eating and lack of appetite and a reaction to the drug, Cerenia. He is currently at back to 2 units of insulin post recovery from the emergency hospital stay. I do have some questions about managing Max's diabetes and while our local vet has been generally helpful we are having some issues maintaining his blood sugar levels as indicated by the glucose curves both at the vet's office and at home. His glucose readings are on the high side with his lowest number being 17 mmol/L to a high of 34 mmol/L.

Where is the best area to post our questions? Thanks for any info and help you can provide...

Regards,
Andrew

 

Hello and welcome from BC. This is the right place to post your questions. This post will tell you what information we need to help you:
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I'm glad to hear you are monitoring the blood sugars at home. That's the best way to keep him safe. Blood glucose curves at the vet aren't of much value as cats tend to test higher with stress. Which blood glucose monitor are you using? Can you tell me what type of insulin you are giving? Going up from 2 to 4 units is way too big a jump, cats are sensitive to much smaller changes. And what food is Max eating? The type of food can make a huge difference in dosing. See, we'll ask lots of questions too.

 

Hi,

We are using the AlphaTrak glucose monitor. Sorry, I should clarify that we went from the initial 2 units of insulin to 3 units and then to 4 units to try and control his blood glucose levels. The jump was gradual as well. We are using Lantus as his insulin. Even at 4 units per dosage his glucose levels are still staying high overall.

Max is a picky eater as he will sometimes each something once and then refuse to eat it the second time. He was initially given the dry and wet foods veterinary diet foods for diabetic cats but he stopped eating the wet food after the second can. He ate the diabetic dry food for about a month and then went off that as well. When I spoke to the vet about it they suggested to give him a commercial brand with high protein and low carbs since he stopped eating the other foods. We were feeding him Fromm Surf and Turf dry kibble but it might have been an issue for him as the carb content might have been sill too high for him.

At the moment, he is eating an urgent care wet food (a/d) from Hills post hospital stay and also a dry food that is hypoallergenic from Royal Canin. I believe the urgent care wet food is to help regain his weight as he lost about 2 pounds during his hospital stay. It appears that he also has IBD on board as well which was discovered through an ultrasound at the hospital vet clinic. I have been reading that diabetic cats should stick to a wet food diet only and am wondering if Max eating any type of dry food is contributing to his high glucose levels even with the insulin being given.

Thanks for any advice or additional info you can provide.

Regards,
Andrew

 

Gradual increases for us for Lantus users is 0.25 or 0.5 unit increases. 1 unit is a big jump at the size of dose he's on.

Many cat grow tired easily of the "diabetic" cat foods. They aren't anything special or even that good a quality ingredients. A/D isn't bad, but we'd consider it medium carb instead of low carb. If possible, getting rid of any dry food will really help - they are mostly way too high in carbs, especially the "vet" ones. For IBD, you want novel proteins, there are plenty of wet foods with lamb, venison, rabbit, kangaroo, etc. whatever might be novel to him. This food list (click on blue link) contains some of the cat foods available in North America, with a listing of carb and protein percents. Ideally you want under 10% carbs. It's missing a few of the newer ones like Identity and Rawz, that both have novel protein. Raw food is also a great option for both IBD and diabetes. More reading here: https://www.ibdkitties.net/

The big however, don't change the carbs in food until you are monitoring frequently. Getting rid of high carb dry food makes a huge difference in the amount of insulin needed.

 

The Royal Canine hypoallergenic dry food is 34% carbs!

 

Hi,

Thanks for the food list link and novel food suggestions. We will check them out. For now, he will be staying on his urgent care wet food as recommended by my local vet until he regains some weight. We also cooked some chicken (plain and boiled) which he ate. Vet also recommended we move Max back to 2.5 units of insulin per dose and do another glucose curve test in a few days. We are going to stick to wet food only for him as much as possible going forward.