Newly Diagnosed Kitty

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Alex&Bronxi

Alex&Bronxi

Member Since 2023
Hi everyone,

Happy New Year!!

We are from Toronto, Canada, and just looking for some advice /support from others going through this, especially with cat food!

My fur baby was very recently diagnosed with diabetes. He is 12 years old, and a big boy around 8kg, a little chubby but also a big cat. He had been drinking more and urinating about 5 times per day and it was suspicious to me, for a few weeks before i took him in to the vet.

On Dec 20 or so he was diagnosed and we started him on 1 unit Lantus 2x day before Christmas. I believe his blood test indicated level 20 initially (which could not have been from stress) and urinalysis confirmed. He has been doing quite well, and last Friday the vet did his first glucose curve. She was very happy with the results saying the outcome was very good and we should keep the current dose, and he has a good shot at remission.

Anyway, i have adjusted his meal plan so that he gets two big meals (7:30am & 7:30 pm) and then his insulin, with maybe a few treats / kibbles in between either when I'm home, or with the two container automatic feeder. He is a very food driven cat, is always a hungry guy, so needless to say cutting out the free feeding has led to some sleepless nights, but he's getting better.

About 5 years ago he had a urinary blockage, so he has been on an urinary diet as well ever since. He was on Royal Canin SO, a mix of wet and dry, and then they changed the recipe, and after looking at all the ingredients with a fine toothcomb, I realized they added wheat and wheat gluten. I then switched him to the only two SO foods with no wheat, the Royal Canin SO Hydrolized Protein kibbles and their Urinary SO Calm/Satiety food, the only cans without wheat.
However now, after discussion with the vet, we have decided to switch him to a Diabetic diet also, and the Purina Proplan DM seems to be only one without wheat and an SO index....and i got the kibbles as well because it seems they contain gluten from corn only not wheat so hoping to try these but have not yet.
Anyway, the first week on Lantus I was also giving him mostly what i had canned (the Royal Canin) with a small side of kibbles. He was great. Now, I have reduced the kibbles slightly, and have been mixing in the Purina canned for about 1 week. Problem is, last 24h he has had a slightly runnier stool (nevermind the stools smell particularly awful). Could be nothing.

Are there any other foods out there that might be good for this combo: No wheat + Urinary Index + Diabetic? Now i am afraid to add the Purina kibbles to his diet also if the canned is not great so i think i will skip it for a few days. Today i gave him a few small pieces of boiled chicken breast as an add on, i just boil the chicken in plain water no salt so kinda bland, but considering adding rice too if his stomach gets worse.

Overall he has been doing well, and with the insulin just pees twice a day like clockwork as before, although much less water intake (probably because of wet food). I did get the Alphatrak kit now, so will try and get the hang of that this weekend. He is such a great cat, he loves contact, so after his meal i just tap on the couch, he comes over and sits so i give him his shot. I feel like I really lucked out there. :)

Sorry for the long story here, any advice would be greatly appreciated!!
 
Hi and welcome to the forum Alex and Bronxi,
First of all you are using a very good insulin in Lantus.
Re the food
There is absolutely no need at all to be feeding expensive prescription diets. What is needed is low carb, high protein wet diet for a diabetic cat. All the foods you mention are high carb including the dry diabetic food.
Look for wet food that is 10% carbs or under. Most of us feed carbs around 4 to 7%
CANADIAN FOOD CHART

Feeding times
Just feeding twice a day is old thinking for the old insulins. We recommend feeding a main meal before the two insulin doses each day and then 2 or 3 snacks during the first half of all cycles around +2, +4 and +7 for example. That is 2,4 and 7 hours after the doses of insulin. But you can vary those times. A snack is around 1 or 2 teaspoons of low carb food.

Hometesting the blood glucose
Are you thinking about home testing the blood glucose levels? It is one of the best things you can do to keep Bronxi safe and know what the dose is doing each day. Just getting a curve done every so often at the vet is not only expensive but it doesn’t tell you what is happening the rest of all the other days. If you are interested I can give you some links to it. …I see you have bought an alpha track meter. They are quite expensive to run. You might like to get a human meter, which most of us nude here and they are much cheaper to run.

I would not add any rice to the chicken as that will raise the carb level! Just plain chicken is a great snack.
One think you need to be aware of is….when you swap over to a low carb diet, you will need to be home testing because a change in the diet to low carb will drop the blood glucose by up to 100 points (that’s US numbers) or by Canadian points ..up to 5 or 6 points.
Here is a link to useful information for new members
HELP US HELP YOU
 
Alex&Bronxi said:
Are there any other foods out there that might be good for this combo: No wheat + Urinary Index + Diabetic?
Click to expand...


Just a suggestion, this is my experience with this food
Hi Alex , Tyler was blocked this past Nov , the mucus plug, cost me 1288.00 at the ER
They suggested the same prescription food that you have.
I looked and the carbs were way too high, he has been in remission since 1-24-21
so I was not going to feed him any of that.
He was on Fancy Feast Classic Pate.
I know give him this since Nov of last year and it did not raise his BG at all
I don't know if you can get this in Canada but here it is
It does list the ingredients
https://www.walmart.com/ip/24-Pack-...Beef-and-Chicken-Entree-5-5-oz-Cans/808002179

I know you can get it from Amazon, and Chewey
I get it at Petco, or Pet Smart so I don't have to order it in line

Here is the Purina Website
https://www.purina.com/pro-plan/cats/wet-cat-food/urinary-tract-health-formula-beef-chicken

I told my vet about it and he said it was fine
The carbs for the beef and chicken is around 4%
 
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Welcome to FDMB!

I'd suggest taking a look at this website on feline nutrition. The website is authored by a vet with an interest in feline nutrition. There's also a section on urinary tract issues that you may find helpful. The vet, Lisa Pierson, DVM, is not a fan of dry cat food. As a rule, dry foods are not a species appropriate diet for a cat. Cats are obligate carnivores. Regarding kidney and urinary tract concerns, dry food is, in a word, terrible. Cats have a limited thirst drive. In the wild, they get the majority of their liquids from the prey they kill. There's no kibble in the wild. Canned food is closer to what they would eat and had a much greater moisture content than dry food. Most of us add water to our cat's canned food.
 
Hi and welcome from the States. I'm in the WNY area so we are practically neighbors! *waves across the lake*

Bronxi is adorable I love the name.
 
Thank you all for your messages!

Will take a look at all the resources and digest this information. The food he was on, he was doing well but he was overweight and probably that's my fault with overfeeding. He is a very vocal, aggressive cat when he is hungry, so sometimes I would give in. So trying to be better now and give him a lot less.

The concern is diabetes of course, but a urinary blockage is very serious, and my understanding from the vet who saved his life at the time, as crummy as Royal Canin and Hill's seem, a lot of people switch from an SO diet thinking they know better or that their cat is cured, and then end up right back to square one with that issue in a year or two. In fact at the time before the blockage, I was feeding him lots of those Weruva chicken soup pouches, Merrick's cans and Orijen kibbles, so high quality stuff. He has not had any urinary issues on Royal Canin in 5 years so i can say that much about it at least.

I am definitely leaning towards keeping him on canned predominantly, and the kibbles would be for treats between meals. Will keep looking and see if there is any urinary canned food that is low carb and wheat free that might work for him. It's not easy now that he has multiple health issues. The food is one area that Trupanion would not cover, so a cheaper alternative would be great, especially with his size, but I will do what I need to regardless so that he is healthy and gets better. Luckily he is not a picky eater at all.

I did get the hang of the glucose meter, his reading last night at 11:30 and 4h after lantus and his meal was 5.1 mmol. He seems otherwise normal.
 
The 5.1 reading is a normal range number.

Did your vet happen to get a fructosamine test? The fructosamine provides an average blood glucose over a 3 week period. It gives you a better idea if your seeing blood glucose being elevated for a few weeks versus a high number taken on a meter at the vet's office.
 
Waving at you from the west (wet) coast.

I had a kitty diagnosed with idiopathic cystitis one week after Neko got her diabetes diagnosis. He was originally on CD, but she kept stealing his food, so I needed something low carb both could eat. His vet suggested raw food. That with plenty of water added worked for him. I both bought commercially available, and made my own raw. The catinfo website also suggests low phosphorus, in addition to low carb.

There are a lot more food options in this food chart from the catinfo website Sienne suggested. It's US based and a couple years old, but a lot of the foods listed in the chart are also available in Canada, in pet food stores. That includes Weruva, but not the chicken soup version as that's too high in carbs, as are the pouches. A lot of the Merrick are too high in phosphorus.

That 5.1 blood sugar you measured is a little concerning. Our dosing methods say that a cat who is getting some dry food, and goes under 5.0 (90 in US speak) is on too high a dose of insulin. Given that Lantus often takes the cat lower until 6 hours after the shot, it's possible 1 unit is too much Lantus. Glad to hear you've picked up a meter to start testing him.
 
Thank you all!!

It turns out that the Purina DM cans are very low carb, and even the Royal Canin Urinary SO calm + satiety are low carb also according to how the calculations are done in the charts. So if he gets intolerant to Purina, I guess it's back to the old food...
I still need to find some better kibbles for between the meal snacks so working on this part...
His glucose throughout the day is mid-high 5s mmol...about 5.9 mmol 2h before his dinner is what I last checked. So his diabetes is well controlled so far! Here's praying for remission.

Beautiful kitties everyone! Hoping for a good outcome for everyone on here and am super grateful for the wealth of information! :)
 
We want to feed out diabetics less than 10% carbs. DM is 6%, so OK, not what I'd call "very low carb". Many cats do get tired of the taste, so be on the lookout for that. As for the Royal Canin Urinary + Calm, it's 24% carbs, what we'd call very high carb and not suitable as a regular food for diabetics.

Instead of dry food for meal snacks, why not low carb wet food? If you want to space out the food, you can get automatic feeders, or you can freeze a catsicle (cat food + water) and leave it out to thaw.
 
Ok then I am not calculating the amounts right. What is the formula for the calculation, the Purina Dm nutritional info listed:
Crude protein 12%, Crude fat 4.5%, Fibre 2%, Moisture 78%, Ash 3.1%
Also Royal Canin Urinary SO Calm + Satiety wet small can, just Calm is a different formula
 
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Nutritional numbers listed on the can are not exact. You have to either contact the manufacturer or see if they have the data listed on their website. The Catinfo website food chart was created by contacting a lot of the manufacturers and doing the calculations. Same for the Canadian food chart linked above. This post gives you the detailed info on how to do the calculations: Calculating % Calories from Carbohydrates

The Calm + Satiety has some pretty carby ingredients: brewers rice flour, powdered cellusose (aka paper). Also carrageenan which I avoid feeding my cats.
 
Thank you! The only thing, that info is from 2017! Royal Canin alone has changed ingredients and cans at least twice last 3 years, and adding wheat. Lots of manufacturers are changing everything now because of shortages too.

I think care has to be taken when giving anyone advice to ditch the vet recommendations, especially when it comes to multiple health conditions being managed at once, treatment is not prevention any longer. Sure, I probably could have researched better to prevent his urinary crystals, but that was when he was younger unfortunately. I also got him as a 5 year old rescue at the time.

Will see if I can get him some better snacks for sure, at least on days when I work from home.
 
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