Most diabetic cats act that way, like they are starving. And that's actually true. Because the diabetes has their system all messed up, they can't metabolize food as well as a non-diabetic can, so they need more calories per day than "normal". It's great that she is gaining weight. That would indicate that she's getting enough food, but a little more is not going to hurt her. A good thing to determine, with your vet's help, is "what should Ginger's ideal body weight be?" That will help you to figure out how much food she needs.
It won't really mess up your numbers if you feed her extra at shot time. The boost in BG from eating shows up in the first 2 or 3 hours after eating, so the test just before you feed and give insulin will be "clear" of food.
Feeding several times a day is a good thing to do. I used to feed Bob a can every twelve hours when he got his shots, and then a half can about 5 hours after each shot whenever I could. That can also help by not letting the numbers go "too low" when the insulin is peaking 5-7 hours after the shots.
Looking at your spreadsheet, you are getting really good "action" from that .6u dose, sometimes you are seeing more than 200 points worth of "drop" by the time 4 hours has passed. If you could feed just a little at +4, that will help the numbers from not going too much lower.
While it may sound confusing, like "why would I want to stop the numbers from coming down?" there's a good reason for it. Sometimes what happens is that the drop in numbers is too much. At some point, when they go too low (not low like hypoglycemic or anything), their body will instinctively react. We call it "liver panic". A diabetic cat's body adjust to diabetic glucose numbers, and those higher numbers become the new "normal" to them. When the BG goes low, the pancreas and the liver trigger the dumping of "sugar" into the bloodstream to try the bring the numbers up to a level that they "think" is safe and normal. What that gives you is higher BG numbers later in the cycle. Another way we describe this is "bouncing" which I am sure if you've done much reading here, you have seen that mentioned?
If you look at your AM cycle from yesterday.... it started out with a nice number (248), and although you don't know what may have happened over the next twelve hours, you ended up at PMPS with a 403, right? Well, what probably happened (given that you've seen drops of more than 200 points on this dose) is that
Ginger's BG in the middle of the cycle dropped into the double digits. Her body probably said "whoa, that's too low!" and triggered a glucose dump into her system.
If you just look at the 2 numbers, 248 and 403, your first thought might be "wow, why is it higher? Maybe she needs a higher dose because this one didn't seem to work too well". But really, it may have worked "too well". If a dose works too well, you have two options you can try. One is to lower the dose so that the numbers don't dip too low in the middle. The other is to "feed the curve" by giving a small portion of food during the first half of the 12 hour cycle, like around +4 or +5 like I mentioned above. That can help reduce or eliminate the "bouncing" caused by low numbers.
I know that's a lot of information early on, and there's sooooo much information flying at you in the beginning, so I hope I didn't confuse things for you. :smile:
Any time you have any questions, post them so we can all try to help.
Carl
