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cimoreneSnookums 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. To wit, in Oct-Nov when his insulin dose was reduced from 2 to 1 units twice daily, his 12-hour blood sugar curve was topping out around 8-10 and hitting a nadir of 4-6; earlier it was more in the 10-18 range. I think the idea with diabetic cats is to aim to stabilize it under 15, if I remember right. Sunday it was ~23, ~24, and Monday morning 25+. I responded right away by giving him two units of insulin at the time of course, but I emailed the vet Monday morning about it to confirm, and she did, so now he's getting 2 units twice daily again.
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.
The only foods you can reliably buy at a Finnish grocery store that are Catkins-diet approved are a couple of the Sheba patés (NOT all of them) and the brand known as Fancy Feast in North American or Gourmet Gold here in Europe; all the other Sheba stuff is loaded with vegetables and grains and the FF/GG is prized because it's one of the easiest things to get sick and picky cats to eat, but it does have slightly more carbs than is really desirable for a diabetic cat. So we have to buy huge heavy quantities of canned food either at pet stores (and they don't all have the same brands, and our cats won't eat all the brands anyway; often there's only one acceptable brand or two at a given pet store) or by mail from Zooplus. There are several brands that our cats will eat that have acceptable nutritional levels in some of their flavors and lines, including Vom Feinstein (but not Carny), Miamor (most of their foods have too many carbs, but there are a few that don't), Nature's Menu, Country Hunter, Feringa..., but there's another factor:
YOU SEE...
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.
'Nutritionally complete' and fat:protein ratio:
So what we need is a source of wet food that has as close to 0 carbohydrates as possible (this is already a tall order - there's a whole art to reading analytical constituents labels and spreadsheets maintained by the diabetic cat owner community based on people calling pet food companies and asking for more precise info - most cat food that is labeled 'grain-free' still contains cheating carbs from potatoes or other root vegetables to bulk it out because meat is more expensive than vegetables)... but that isn't enough really, because it has to be nutritionally complete (ie containing taurine and other nutrients that cats in the wild get from eating prey whole - bone and organ meat etc - which they couldn't get if you just fed them human-quality raw meat), and most wet food is designed to be fed 'supplementally', that is, alongside dry kibble with the aforementioned additives. Nutritional completion also isn't enough, though; doesn't mean having a good balance of fat and protein. The ratio can go wrong either direction. The expensive shit that I feed the cats in the middle of the night because they (usually) love it and wolf it down is called Thrive complete, and it's nutritionally complete but is made from only human quality meat cuts, which is bad for cats not only because of the abovementioned minerals and so on, but because it's better for their digestive systems to eat varying textures and substances. Thrive has too little fat to be healthy as their entire diet (which is just as well because it pretty much costs too much for that anyway); cheap foods tend to have too much fat and too little protein and overpriced ones tend to go the other way (unless they're 'for kittens').Availability:
The only foods you can reliably buy at a Finnish grocery store that are Catkins-diet approved are a couple of the Sheba patés (NOT all of them) and the brand known as Fancy Feast in North American or Gourmet Gold here in Europe; all the other Sheba stuff is loaded with vegetables and grains and the FF/GG is prized because it's one of the easiest things to get sick and picky cats to eat, but it does have slightly more carbs than is really desirable for a diabetic cat. So we have to buy huge heavy quantities of canned food either at pet stores (and they don't all have the same brands, and our cats won't eat all the brands anyway; often there's only one acceptable brand or two at a given pet store) or by mail from Zooplus. There are several brands that our cats will eat that have acceptable nutritional levels in some of their flavors and lines, including Vom Feinstein (but not Carny), Miamor (most of their foods have too many carbs, but there are a few that don't), Nature's Menu, Country Hunter, Feringa..., but there's another factor:
What meat is it?
YOU SEE...
- Cornish rexes have sensitive stomachs. One common characteristic of the breed is a tendency to regurgitate everything they eat if they eat too much at one time; trying to give smaller portions can help with this. Another is just vomiting easily when their stomachs get upset, which is frequently.
- Cats are smaller than people and ocean fish have trace levels of mercury in them that can become cumulatively toxic if they eat too much.
- Beef and pork are both relatively common feline allergens. Even if a cat (or person) isn't allergic to something yet, the more they're exposed, the higher their chances of developing a sensitivity or an allergy. And Cornish rexes are sensitive.
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.
(no subject)
Date: 8 Jan 2020 05:17 pm (UTC)I happened to have some turkey liver around at Christmas, and chopped a little of it up for my cats, who were *delighted* with it. Chicken liver is cheap? My two have just started getting a bit picky (they were rescue cats, and used to gobble whatever they were given, but they have now recognised that they are cherished pets...) so we are ringing the changes a bit, but a cat with diabetes has to be more difficult all round. Good luck!