PLEASE HELP cat food and diabetes

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redchief

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Hi All

I need some help. I was reading Blinkys food suggestions. My cat is on 7 units of Humilin N. I was feeding her Hairball contorll light adult from Hills science diet. I read on the site its almost 30 carbs. I want to change her to wellness core. Which is only 11 g of carbs. I suppose this is better. I'm nearvous because I don't want her to crash. I bought a one touch and tried to prick her twice in the ear and she won't draw blood. I don't see any veins. I saw the videos that make it look easy. Any suggestions on how to change her food. Please help......... Thanks


Rob
 
When you tried to test the blood, did you warm up the ear first? Some white rice in a cotton sock, microwave for about 15 seconds, so it's warm, not hot, then place that on the ear for a few moments to warm. That will help get the blood flowing.

Once you use the lancet, you can also try to milk the spot, push blood up from below and down from above, pushing blood towards where you poked.

If you plan on changing the food, even going from dry food to another dry that's lower in carbs, it's going to be important that you get the hometesting down.

Do you want to post a general location to where you live, maybe one of us lives nearby and can help. For example, I live in New Haven County, Connecticut, USA.
 
Do you want to change the title of your first post to read "help with hometesting, NY area"

Are you interested in getting some possible help in hometesting? If so, I would change the subject line of the post to get folks attention.
 
You are right to be worried about changing her diet to a low carb one while on 7 units of humulin. That is a whopper of a dose. How long has your kitty been on insulin? How often were her insulin doses increased and how did your vet gauge the need to up the dose?

If you want to make the switch, I would recommend getting a couple of days of testing under your belt with the current food to see where you are at and then slowly make the switch once you are comfortable with testing. You may have to test often with the food switch because there will be less sugars running around in her system which could result in much lower numbers than you are used to seeing. Read up on how to treat hypoglycemia and make sure you have a couple of cans of higher carb food and some karo syrup on hand just in case. I don't mean to scare you at all, but it is always better to be prepared just in case!
 
You are right to want to get your kitty off of SD hairball light. The light hairball is actually 40% carbs. That's the food we used to feed and Smokey LOVED it. As you can see from our chart we went diet controlled within 4 months of diagnosis on Lantus and changing to wet food.

You are also right to be concerned about that much insulin going in with that big of a change in the carbs consumed. I would proceed with caution and definitely try to get comfortable hometesting so that you can keep an eye on things. Have you talked to the vet about the diet change and reducing the insulin needs?
 
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