Newly Diagnosed Question (Food)

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Susan & Riley

Susan & Riley

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Hello all,

First of all I wanted to say thank you for this great message board. I'm learning so much.

I have a question that I'm hoping someone can offer some insight to.

My cat Riley (15 yr old Siamese) has just been diagnosed with Diabetes.

He has always struggled with bad eating habits and being slightly over weight.

About 2 years ago our vet suggested we put him on a strict diet to help him lose some weight and get it stabilized.
The food is Hills W/D low fat diabetic gastrointestinal dry food. It isn't cheap. But he's been eating it all this time just fine and has dropped about two pounds over the past two years.

About 4 days ago I noticed how sickly he looked all of the sudden. His fur was very greasy, he wasn't his usual vocal self, he was sleeping constant, wasn't eating, was drinking excessively, and was walking strange with his back legs. I took him to the vet yesterday and today he's been diagnosed with diabetes.
Yet, he's been on this diabetic food.
I read on the site that when cats are diagnosed they shouldn't eat any dry food any longer and that's all he has been eating the past two years.

Is it possible that this dry food the vet put him on has contributed to him having diabetes?
He has his senior profile done 4 months ago and his sugar levels were OK. He was slightly anemic however and the vet still does not know why he's been anemic. His current test results show he is still.
I haven't been the biggest fan of my vet as I think a lot of the time they are looking for money any way they can get it... So I'm concerned.
It's strange to me that all of the sudden he has diabetes when he was on diabetic food to begin with.

Any type of words of wisdom would be great. I'm going to the vets tomorrow for the consult and I'd love to have some legit questions to ask.

Thank you so much!!
Susan
 
Very interesting..
Thank you for this web site. We were giving him the wet food version of this brand as well but he wouldn't eat it so we stuck to the dry. Our vet did know we were doing this however. Thank you again..
All very upsetting now that we know this could have possibly been prevented.
 
Almost everyone here fed dry food, so you are not alone. The commercials said it was great! :mrgreen: We fed Science Diet which is one of the worst for nutrition and carb values. It's what you do from now on that will be important for your kitty.
 
Hi Susan!

Your Riley sounds EXACTLY like my Bandit. He ate a mostly dry diet of Purina Indoor for the first six years of his life, and became morbidly obese on that diet. My vet at the time (one of the creators of Hill's prescription diets, so I thought I was in the hands of an expert), put Bandit on dry W/D with controlled feedings. Bandit lost weight, but he also got very sick from the food. What I discovered later on is that W/D is just about the worst thing you can feed a cat (and especially a diabetic cat)--sure the cat loses weight, but the incredibly high carb content damages the pancreas. I am convinced the W/D caused Bandit's diabetes.

A low carb, canned commercial diet is best for a diabetic cat. If you're looking for a good weight loss food, you'll just want something that's not crazy high in calories. After I ditched the W/D, Bandit was on Wellness for a while, but he gained a little extra weight back on that food. I've found the best foods to maintain Bandit's ideal weight are Fancy Feast (diabetic safe foods here: http://felinediabetes.com/glutenfree.htm), and Merrick's. I found that after the W/D incident, Bandit has become very sensitive to high fat foods (they cause gastro issues), so I try to keep him away from those now. Right now he eats Merricks Cowboy Cookout, Surf and Turf, and Grammy's Pot Pie, and he has never been healthier in his life. The high protein/low fat of the Merrick's has caused alot of the fat he tends to retain to turn to muscle--he maintains a perfect weight on the Merricks.

For a healthier weight loss plan, check out this site: http://catinfo.org/?link=felineobesity

Here's a link to the updated content of many premium cat foods: https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B8...MzhkYTkxOGM4NThk&sort=name&layout=list&num=50

And here's Binky's chart, that has a ton of commercial options: http://binkyspage.tripod.com/canfood.html

EDIT: What diet is he on now? Have you started insulin yet? The combination of a low carb canned diet, a slow acting insulin like Lantus or Levemir, and regulation via home testing has an 84% remission rate in newly diagnosed cats. It's very important to get on the correct treatment path early, though, because there is a window that gets smaller the longer you wait.
 
Just in case you're curious--here's a picture of Bandit before we started the weight loss:

FATBANDIT.jpg


And here's a picture of him after the whole ordeal, once we switched to the canned diet:

SkinnyBandit-1.jpg


It's hard to believe he's the same kitty! :smile: You can see how much even his coat improved from the change to high protein/moderate fat/low carb canned food.
 
Wow Julia! That is some change!

I, too, was feeding dry only. Since she had always had the outdoors as a bathroom I never knew about how much she was peeing so she might have had FD for quite some time and I didn't know it.

Now she is on canned food- and LOVING it, and close to her healthy weight- she had lost almost 4 lbs- which is why I took her to the vet in the first place. This site continues to answer my questions on the subject of FD :-D .
 
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