Still loosing weight?

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EmberSparks

EmberSparks

Member Since 2023
Hello! My cat Fish was diagnosed late December of 2022, and started treatment in the beginning of January. We’ve gone through different doses, but currently he’s on 1 unit in the morning, .5 in the evening. His weight loss has definitely slowed, but still steadily dropping. In January he was about 16 pounds, he is now at 10, which might not seem bad, but a year before starting treatment, we adopted him at 23 pounds. Our vet does not seem to know why he is still loosing weight, saying that his sugars are normal, and we can just feed him more. They also did not bring up doing curves at home since starting treatment. I’ve tried searching for reasons on why he does not appear to be getting better but have come up with nothing every time, if there’s any advice or insight as to what might be happening/what to do i would appreciate it so much!!

Fish is 10 years old, 10.3 pounds
1UN, .5UN
steadily loosing weight
 
If his diabetes is unregulated, he’ll continue to lose weight because he can’t process the nutrients in the food he’s eating. I’d strongly recommend you start home testing so you can get him regulated. Spot checks at the vet won’t get him there.

Unfortunately most vets do not know a lot about feline diabetes….they have many animals to look after and they all have different diseases and treatments. Vets also get their information about nutrition from the big cat food manufacturers so they are biased in what they recommend.

With a diabetic cat you need:
  • A low carb wet diet that is 10% carbs or under. Most of us use around 4-7% carbs
  • A suitable insulin such as Lantus or Prozinc which are long acting, more gentle insulins than the old insulins.
  • We recommend hometesting the blood glucose with a human meter…it is not necessary to use a pet meter which is expensive to run and is no better. It will keep your kitty safe and you will know how the dose is working for your kitty. Only testing every so often will not tell you what is happening in between those times and an awful lot can happen in even a day.
  • HELP US HELP YOU has information about the spreadsheet, signature and hypo box which you will need to be able to look after your beloved kitty properly
Can you tell us what insulin your kitty has been prescribed and the dose please?

A word of warning though…don’t change the food you are feeding at the moment over to the low carb food until you are testing the blood glucose because a change over can drop the BGs by up to 100 points and we don’t want you to have a hypo on your hands.

We are happy to help you with setting up the spreadsheet, sorting out what food to buy, how to transition safely to a low carb diet, how to learn to home test and much more.

FOOD CHART have a look on this chart and choose foods that are under 10%.

You will also need some higher carb foods for that hypo box..information in the help us help you link.

This is an excellent site for diabetic cats…it has been around for more than 25 years and has very experienced people to help you.

Keep asking lots of questions!
 
I meant to add yes, please feed him more right now. For a cat going from 23 to 16 and to 10 pounds it’s a lot. He basically lost over 50% of his body weight. It may feel overwhelming to think about testing your cat multiple times a day, I know it felt that way to me, but it becomes a part of the routine like feeding or giving insulin. I hope you’ll come back and let us help you. I would like to know the bg readings your vet has gotten since he’s saying his sugars are normal. If he’s truly regulated, then there may be another issue going on and I would suggest taking him to an Internal Medicine specialist.

What does this 1UN, .5UN mean?
 
Ale & Bobo & Minnie (GA) said:
I meant to add yes, please feed him more right now. For a cat going from 23 to 16 and to 10 pounds it’s a lot. He basically lost over 50% of his body weight. It may feel overwhelming to think about testing your cat multiple times a day, I know it felt that way to me, but it becomes a part of the routine like feeding or giving insulin. I hope you’ll come back and let us help you. I would like to know the bg readings your vet has gotten since he’s saying his sugars are normal. If he’s truly regulated, then there may be another issue going on and I would suggest taking him to an Internal Medicine specialist.

What does this 1UN, .5UN mean?
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thank you so much, ive been checking out everything you've sent, asking the vet tomorrow about previous labs
fish is on vetsulin, with 1 unit in the morning, half a unit in the evening, u-40 syringes
we purchased an alpha track 3 meter and i will start updating my spreadsheet as soon as it gets here and im able to start testing
 
Hi and welcome to the forum.
I suspect as soon as you start hometesting the blood glucose (BG) we will be able to see that Fish is remaining in higher than normal numbers for a lot of the time. Vetsulin is not really a good insulin for cats. It is really a dog insulin and as a cat’s metabolism is much faster than a dogs, it does not last the 12 hours of a cycle. You would be much better to get either Lantus or Prozinc insulins, both of which are recommended for cats. They are longer lasting, more gentle insulins.

Re the feeding and food…are you giving the food 1/2 hour before the dose of insulin. This is important as vetsulin hits fast and the cat needs to have food aboard. And as the insulin works strongly for the first 4 or 5 hours, I would make sure Fish is getting at least 2 snacks of low carb food in during the first 4 hours after the dose…both cycles.
I would also feed him more than you are at the moment if he is still losing weight. Until a cat is regulated they can remain hingry and loss weight.
So when you get the glucose meter the routine is …test, feed, wait 1/2 hour, then give the dose of vetsulin insulin.
If you need help with setting up the spreadsheet let us know and someone will help you with it.

Do you have a hypo box set up with some high carb foods and honey or Karo in case of a hypo?
Keep posting and asking questions
 
Bron and Sheba (GA) said:
Hi and welcome to the forum.
I suspect as soon as you start hometesting the blood glucose (BG) we will be able to see that Fish is remaining in higher than normal numbers for a lot of the time. Vetsulin is not really a good insulin for cats. It is really a dog insulin and as a cat’s metabolism is much faster than a dogs, it does not last the 12 hours of a cycle. You would be much better to get either Lantus or Prozinc insulins, both of which are recommended for cats. They are longer lasting, more gentle insulins.

Re the feeding and food…are you giving the food 1/2 hour before the dose of insulin. This is important as vetsulin hits fast and the cat needs to have food aboard. And as the insulin works strongly for the first 4 or 5 hours, I would make sure Fish is getting at least 2 snacks of low carb food in during the first 4 hours after the dose…both cycles.
I would also feed him more than you are at the moment if he is still losing weight. Until a cat is regulated they can remain hingry and loss weight.
So when you get the glucose meter the routine is …test, feed, wait 1/2 hour, then give the dose of vetsulin insulin.
If you need help with setting up the spreadsheet let us know and someone will help you with it.

Do you have a hypo box set up with some high carb foods and honey or Karo in case of a hypo?
Keep posting and asking questions
Click to expand...
thank you so much!! i will definitely talk to the vet about gentler insulins
he's getting his shot about 30 minutes after he eats right now as that was what was recommended when he was dx, but i think ill push it back slowly once im able to start hometesting
i have two other non diabetic cats as well, so food right now is wet scheduled(sheba cuts) at 7am and 7pm, and dry food (purina beyond salmon) that they have access to from about 5am-ish to whenever they finish (usually sometime in the afternoon. ive been up reading so many of these pages, and my plan is to schedule their dry food to how fishes sugars drop, maybe phasing it out aaltogether, not sure yet. do i start making changes to how i feed them soon after testing (thinking minimum 2 weeks)? or wait until im able to get him onto a different insulin type?
should i add a link to my spreadsheet even if i dont have anything to put on it yet? how often is it recommended to test his sugars once im able to?
made a box last night! missing a few things that i plan on adding as soon as possible
again thank you so much, it has been a confusing and scary couple of months not knowing whats going on, i appreciate the help so much
 
Dry food is not good for a diabetic cat. It’s too high carbs and diabetic cats need low carb foods. Once you start home testing, I would transition him out of dry food if you can. That’s likely another reason why he’s still not regulated. Wet food like Classic fancy feast or pates in general are low carb. I believe the Sheba cuts and any food with gravy like fancy feast grilled are also too high carb. Take a look at the chart I posted above. He needs more food now. Just feeding him twice a day is not enough even with the dry available. Diabetic cats also do better with smaller meals throughout the day, it’s easier on their pancreas and it helps avoids big sugar spikes. Can you give him a few more feedings of wet food?

You also don’t need a pet meter, most of us use Walmart ReliOn since it’s accurate and the test strips are super affordable. You can get 100 for about $18 while the alpha strips are $1 each
 
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Another thought, insulin generally works best when you give the same dose in the am and the pm. What’s the reason your vet gave to not do that? You may want to share with him the guidelines from the American Animal Hospital Assn for the treatment of diabetes in both dogs and cats. the AAHA no longer recommends Caninsulin/Vetsulin for treating feline diabetes.

last thing, if you really need to keep them all on dry food, there are only 2 that are low carb, Dr. Elseys and Young Again Zero Carb. You may want to switch them all to one of them. A dry high carb food is not good for any cat, especially a diabetic cat. That’s like feeding your diabetic child a diet of chips, ice cream and sweets. Most vets don’t know that because they know very little about feline nutrition and feline diabetes
 
EmberSparks said:
thank you so much!! i will definitely talk to the vet about gentler insulins
he's getting his shot about 30 minutes after he eats right now as that was what was recommended when he was dx, but i think ill push it back slowly once im able to start hometesting
i have two other non diabetic cats as well, so food right now is wet scheduled(sheba cuts) at 7am and 7pm, and dry food (purina beyond salmon) that they have access to from about 5am-ish to whenever they finish (usually sometime in the afternoon. ive been up reading so many of these pages, and my plan is to schedule their dry food to how fishes sugars drop, maybe phasing it out aaltogether, not sure yet. do i start making changes to how i feed them soon after testing (thinking minimum 2 weeks)? or wait until im able to get him onto a different insulin type?
should i add a link to my spreadsheet even if i dont have anything to put on it yet? how often is it recommended to test his sugars once im able to?
made a box last night! missing a few things that i plan on adding as soon as possible
again thank you so much, it has been a confusing and scary couple of months not knowing whats going on, i appreciate the help so much
Click to expand...
As soon as you’re home testing daily, you can start to transition the foods. No need to wait 2 weeks or wait to switch insulin. The reason you want to wait till you can home test is because switching him from a high carb diet to a low carb diet can drop his bg significantly by as much as 100 points making the dose no longer safe. However, he’s on such a low dose and has lost so much weight I suspect that dose will still be okay but we can’t be 100% sure. Giving dry food to raise the bg is also not great because it takes some time to do that. We recommend giving a higher carb wet food (medium or high carb depending on how low the bg is) or a few drops of Karo or honey when that happens. The hypo kit info is at the very top of the help us help you link I posted for you. In the meantime, you may also want to browse the caninsulin forum and read the yellow sticky notes there since that’s the insulin he’s on right now: https://felinediabetes.com/FDMB/forums/caninsulin-vetsulin-and-n-nph.19/

Yes, you can add the link now to the signature so it’s there already :)
 
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One last thing. What’s his ideal weight? A good rule of thumb for daily calorie intake is ideal weight times 20 so if he should be 16 pounds, you want to make sure you’re feeding him 320 calories a day at least, more now so he can gain some weight back. If he’s getting just 2 cans of Sheba that’s not nearly enough. I know it’s hard to now how much dry he’s eating but I’d aim for a lot more wet food right now.
 
Ale & Bobo & Minnie (GA) said:
As soon as you’re home testing daily, you can start to transition the foods. No need to wait 2 weeks or wait to switch insulin. The reason you want to wait till you can home test is because switching him from a high carb diet to a low carb diet can drop his bg significantly by as much as 100 points making the dose no longer safe. However, he’s on such a low dose and has lost so much weight I suspect that dose will still be okay but we can’t be 100% sure. Giving dry food to raise the bg is also not great because it takes some time to do that. We recommend giving a higher carb wet food (medium or high carb depending on how low the bg is) or a few drops of Karo or honey when that happens. The hypo kit info is at the very top of the help us help you link I posted for you. In the meantime, you may also want to browse the caninsulin forum and read the yellow sticky notes there since that’s the insulin he’s on right now: https://felinediabetes.com/FDMB/forums/caninsulin-vetsulin-and-n-nph.19/

Yes, you can add the link now to the signature so it’s there already :)
Click to expand...

thank you! will definitely phase out the dry food and increase his wet food once testing (starting sunday since i wont be able to monitor him properly saturday)
fish has had trouble finding a dose that works, weve gone from .5-1.5, i will bring it up to the vet when i call with everything ive been gathering
as for the meter, my mom had ordered it before i posted here, thinking about returning it
 
I wanted to check in and ask how is it going? Did you manage to get all the testing supplies? We can help with lots of testing tips to make it easier on both of you, like always warming up the ear (most of us use an old sock we fill up with rice and nuke for about 20-30 seconds. You then hold it up to his ear until it’s warm to the touch) and giving a treat immediately after each attempt to build positive association. You also always want to aim for the sweet spot
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Ember --

I think most of what you're feeding Fish is at the very least in the medium carbohydrate range. All of the Sheba cuts are above 11% carb. The dry food is likely much higher. The Sheba pate style food are all low carb (3%). We consider low carb to be under 10% carb. I would not suggest making any changes to Fish's diet until you're able to home test. By lowering the carbs in his diet, there's a decent chance his blood glucose (BG) numbers will drop. Unless you're home testing, you won't know if that's the case. I would not want to risk hypoglycemia due to a change in diet unless you are testing.

This is a link to a chart that has information about carbohydrates in canned food.
 
Always aim for the sweet spot warm the ears up first, you can put rice in a sock and put it in the microwave, test it on the inside of your wrist to be sure it's not to hot, like you would test a babies bottle. You can fill a pill bottle with warm water and roll it on the ears also.Just keep rubbing the ears with your fingers to warm them up
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6. As the ears get used to bleeding and grow more capilares, it gets easier to get the amount of blood you need on the first try. If he won’t stand still, you can get the blood onto a clean finger nail and test from there.
When you do get some blood you can try milking the ear.
Get you finger and gently push up toward the blood , more will appear
You will put the cotton round behind his ear in case you poke your finger, after you are done testing you will fold the cotton round over his ear to stop the bleeding , press gently for about 20 seconds until it stops
Get 26 or 28 gauge lancets
A lot of us use the lancets to test freehand
I find it better to see where I'm aiming
You can also put a thin layer of vaseline on the ear ,to help the blood bead up
If you look at the lancet under a light you will see one side of the lancet is curved upward, that's the side you want to poke with. I have always free handed. On the lancets I don't have to keep looking for the side that's curved because on the plastic on the lancet there are little holes if you want to call it that, the side on my lancets with the part that's curved upward had smaller holes on it, so when I poke I just look at the lancet for them and poke

For your hypo kit
Have Honey in the house
For example
Fancy Feast Gravy Lovers Gourmet Beef Feast in Gravy 20% High Carbs

Fancy Feast Gravy Lovers Gourmet Chicken Feast in Gravy 15% Med Carbs

Fancy Feast Gravy Lovers Turkey Feast in Gravy 15% Med Carbs

Fancy Feast Gravy Lovers Chicken and Beef in Gravy 15% Med Carbs

Or look at the food chart below and find some Friskies since I see you are feeding that also

Good idea to mark the cans with magic marker how many carbs

Or any on the food chart. Doesn't have to be Fancy Feast just an example about the med and high carb foods


https://felinediabetes.com/FDMB/threads/dr-pierson-new-food-

10% and under is low carb
11% -15 is medium carbs.

16- 24 is high carb.
 
If you can get your vet to prescribe Lantus its expensive in the US. I hope your vet will prescribe it
Most members get the generic you can get generic/biosimilar glargine at very reasonable prices using GoodRx coupon. Most members use the generic because Lantus is to expensive.
https://www.goodrx.com/lantus?label...d-pens-of-100-units-ml&quantity=1&slug=lantus
Make sure that the Match your prescription pull down menue says generic glargine 1carton of 5 3ml pens.
There is no wait time test, feed, give insulin
Lantus usually doesn't kick in until 2 hours after the shot

We buy the pens but use the syringes to draw out the insulin because if you use the pen you can only adjust by full units ,we adjust the doses by 0.25 units
If you do switch to the generic you will need
U -100 SYRINGES WITH HALF UNIT MARKINGS
I can suggest a few if you would like


Also
The 5 pens will last about a year, we use the pens just like a vial, you would just insert the syringe it the gray rubber stopper on the pen and draw out your insulin
Its generic lantus



Or this one also

I see some members will call CVS, Rite Aid, Costco, Walgreen's, to get the price for 5 pens
Posted by another member
One members posted this
. I paid $175 for a box of 5 pens at Walmart pharmacy, but GoodRX coupon says you can get it for around $90 if you have a Rite Aid pharmacy near you.

Just call around for the best price

A member just posted this
Allie was using the Lantus and I just switched to the generic and using the GoodRX I got 5 pens for $81.30 at Walgreens.

GoodRX has a 1-800 number to assist you in using their services to get your pets prescriptions filled if the pharmacy gives you any issues.

I think I found it for you
GoodRx / Customer service

1 (855) 268-2822

Here is the link for the meter and test strips so you don't have to search for them
Relion Premier Classic Meter at Walmart for 9 dollars
https://www.walmart.com/ip/ReliOn-Premier-CLASSIC-Blood-Glucose-Monitoring-System/552134103

The tests strips are 17.88 for 100
https://www.walmart.com/ip/ReliOn-Premier-Blood-Glucose-Test-Strips-100-Count/575088197
 
Ale & Bobo & Minnie (GA) said:
I wanted to check in and ask how is it going? Did you manage to get all the testing supplies?
Click to expand...
we did! i’ve been trying to test since last night, and it seems he has trouble bleeding enough, i tried to adjust the depth to maybe help more and it pierced thought his ear, which kind of messed me up really bad. i also tried free handing about an hour after his shot, but i can’t seem to get enough blood on the test strips. my mom did his preshot test earlier, and from both of our tests, it seems he’s somewhere in the 600s before his shot :((
i know a change in his food would definitely help, and that is the plan, im just a little nervous to before we’re able to test confidently
we’re also trying to get in touch with an internal medicine specialist which is proving to be incredibly difficult, but hopefully tomorrow!
 
EmberSparks said:
i also tried free handing about an hour after his shot, but i can’t seem to get enough blood on the test strips.
Click to expand...
tested this morning without issues! i think i messed up his shot somehow though, his fur was wet and smelled like the insulin, but i swear i felt the needle come out, will check his bg in about an hour or two. i’m not really sure what to do if i did miss his injection since his bg is already so high
 
Are you using the tips I gave you? Warming up the ear, giving a treat and aiming for the sweet spot? It should help and the capilares in the ear will learn to bleed the more you test. Great news you got it today! For the fur shot, I always used an additional light source so I could see the needle going in and out, like a flashlight. I did that for testing too. I’m pretty sure his dose will need to be increased, as you can see by the numbers you got so far, but let’s get a few more days of testing. He’s on a very small beginners dose right now.
 
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