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8 Jan 2020
Snookums seems to have been suffering from slowly rising blood sugar in the past few weeks, and he had a couple of nights wherein he was super restless and then one where he felt obviously queasy, so I tested his blood sugar Sunday and it was incredibly high - the highest I've recorded yet in fact. ( #s )
The likely cause of the spike is his diet changing.
Unfortunately, the cats' diets change a lot, because not only are they rather picky about their food, they won't eat the same food too many times in a row. ( There are factors to be balanced against each other: low carbs - as close to zero as possible; adequate fat and protein; availability; minimal ocean fish, not too much beef or pork; 'do the cats eat it' and 'are the cats tired of it yet'. )
So along with the other strictures and the already-limited availability of compliant foods, we're also trying to minimize beef, pork, and ocean fish in the cats' diets, which leaves, basically, poultry, mutton, game, and freshwater fish (I've only seen this from one brand from, I think, New Zealand, but the possibility remains).
And remember... if I give them the same food too many times too close together, they'll refuse to eat it. They still do get pork and beef regularly, but I try to make it a minority of their diet.
So that's why I have been tearing my hair out, and also why I have tried out three or four new lines of cat food since October or November. And now we come to the conclusion that one or more of the foods introduced in the last shipment from Zooplus probably is at fault, which means I should not feed them any more of them... and we should go back to the foods they were eating in November and October, but most of them have been cycled out so we're either running low or out of them at the moment. Some of them can be obtained at pet stores in the area, but we're gonna have to order more from Zooplus as well.
I probably should try to transition them to raw food again, because at this point it might actually be less effort, but I have limited planning spoons left with which to consider the idea.
The likely cause of the spike is his diet changing.
Unfortunately, the cats' diets change a lot, because not only are they rather picky about their food, they won't eat the same food too many times in a row. ( There are factors to be balanced against each other: low carbs - as close to zero as possible; adequate fat and protein; availability; minimal ocean fish, not too much beef or pork; 'do the cats eat it' and 'are the cats tired of it yet'. )
So along with the other strictures and the already-limited availability of compliant foods, we're also trying to minimize beef, pork, and ocean fish in the cats' diets, which leaves, basically, poultry, mutton, game, and freshwater fish (I've only seen this from one brand from, I think, New Zealand, but the possibility remains).
And remember... if I give them the same food too many times too close together, they'll refuse to eat it. They still do get pork and beef regularly, but I try to make it a minority of their diet.
So that's why I have been tearing my hair out, and also why I have tried out three or four new lines of cat food since October or November. And now we come to the conclusion that one or more of the foods introduced in the last shipment from Zooplus probably is at fault, which means I should not feed them any more of them... and we should go back to the foods they were eating in November and October, but most of them have been cycled out so we're either running low or out of them at the moment. Some of them can be obtained at pet stores in the area, but we're gonna have to order more from Zooplus as well.
I probably should try to transition them to raw food again, because at this point it might actually be less effort, but I have limited planning spoons left with which to consider the idea.