JessK&Callie
Member Since 2024
Hello!
I posted the other day about our 15/16 year old cat named Callie who was recently diagnosed with Diabetes. We are still very early on in the process and she just started her insulin injections last Thursday. She gets 1 unit of the Lantus Solostar insulin 2x a day via syringe. She's doing well - getting used to the shots, now howling anymore, but still drinking and peeing a ton. She goes in Friday for her BG Curve Test, and we've purchased a glucometer.
My question is regarding diet. We've done lots of reading, research, etc, and we've decided which food to put her on, but what we don't know is how to go about it - we know that changing their diet also impacts the insulin dosage, as we saw this:
If you change your diabetic cat’s diet to one with lower carbohydrates, he will, in all probability, IMMEDIATELY (not days or weeks later) require a reduction in his insulin dosage. He may also immediately go into ‘remission’ and not need any insulin at all.
If this warning is ignored, you may very well end up with a cat in a hypoglycemic crisis (dangerously low blood sugar) which can result in death, or brain damage.
If you take only one point away from this page, it needs to be the understanding that if you stop pouring carbs into your cat by switching to a low-carb canned food diet (or even a dry food diet with lower carbs than you have been feeding), you MUST be aware of the probable immediate and significant impact on your cat’s insulin needs.
Of course we don't want that to happen, and I did mention it to our vet who didn't seem to think it was an issue, so I wanted to ask here - where do we start?
Thank you!
I posted the other day about our 15/16 year old cat named Callie who was recently diagnosed with Diabetes. We are still very early on in the process and she just started her insulin injections last Thursday. She gets 1 unit of the Lantus Solostar insulin 2x a day via syringe. She's doing well - getting used to the shots, now howling anymore, but still drinking and peeing a ton. She goes in Friday for her BG Curve Test, and we've purchased a glucometer.
My question is regarding diet. We've done lots of reading, research, etc, and we've decided which food to put her on, but what we don't know is how to go about it - we know that changing their diet also impacts the insulin dosage, as we saw this:
If you change your diabetic cat’s diet to one with lower carbohydrates, he will, in all probability, IMMEDIATELY (not days or weeks later) require a reduction in his insulin dosage. He may also immediately go into ‘remission’ and not need any insulin at all.
If this warning is ignored, you may very well end up with a cat in a hypoglycemic crisis (dangerously low blood sugar) which can result in death, or brain damage.
If you take only one point away from this page, it needs to be the understanding that if you stop pouring carbs into your cat by switching to a low-carb canned food diet (or even a dry food diet with lower carbs than you have been feeding), you MUST be aware of the probable immediate and significant impact on your cat’s insulin needs.
Of course we don't want that to happen, and I did mention it to our vet who didn't seem to think it was an issue, so I wanted to ask here - where do we start?
Thank you!

