Alice 9/20 AMPS 418 - why these bounces? :(

I must be missing something because she keeps throwing these reds!

I have been trying to decrease her from 3 friskies cans a day to two because she is quite weight-restored now. Also next month she will have officially been dx’ed diabetic for a year.

Yesterday I met a human who had lost much of his vision due to his diabetes. It also ruined his kidneys and he ended up getting a kidney and pancreas transplant. What a reminder of how diabetes can affect so many body systems. Of course he was type 1 and the pancreas transplant does mean he no longer has diabetes now.

Here is one of the front gardens the human made. Every day I pick a few marigold petals for the bunny to mix into his hay, along with some chocolate mint.

The morning glories have grown up this one shoot of a weed that snuck into the garden.

And this is my black cat, my second eldest, Majyk. By her great insistence, she spends the majority of her time outside.


I hope everyone has a beautiful day where possible. Today human and I must go to a funeral service for an old friend of the human’s.

Light and love to you all. <3 and meows.

 

Nice to hear from you Cassandra! I wonder what’s going on with Alice? Hopefully she evens out soon!

Love the garden and Majyk is a kitty baby after my heart! So so Cute!!!

Sorry to hear about your humans loss.

 

Nice garden and beautiful Majyk. I planted a chocolate mint plant this year. The other day I could smell the chocolate from my deck. It came with a recipe for cake. Can't find that now. Wish it was a perennial though.

 

My choco mint is potted so hopefully I can bring it in and hang it indoors when it gets too cold! I’m not much of a gardener. I have one sad kale plant that keeps coming back, my indoor ivy in water, and that mint. Those are my plant responsibilities. Except for the ivy, the idea was that I’d grow all these things that I could feed to my rabbit.... human left most of the seeds out and bunny just ate the seeds instead.

 

I'm sorry for the loss of your dear friend.

 

Sometimes it's hard to tell why our cats bounce, but it looks like Alice may have dipped into green last night. I hope she flattens out for you. Cute picture of Majyk. I'm sorry about your friend's passing. Sending prayers for the family.

 

not sure about chocolate mint -- mine basically took over the garden and kept coming back for years ...

lost my huge old sage bush last year -- ants decided to build their nest heap under it .. I baited them with baking soda, they took it underground and basically killed all growing things in that whole area -- I've stacked sod over the dead dirt and with luck can coax some annuals to grow through the early fall rains

splendid Majyk -- love cannas (I think that's what they are) -- and know all about the twining weeds that suddenly appear ...

 

I love to toss some Flower petals into my salads. Makes it look so pretty! Marigolds contain carotene which converts to Vitamin A in your body!

I had a wild rabbit I raised from "just born" when I was a child. His favorite thing to eat was Dandelions " Dandelions are definitely safe for your rabbit to eat. Dandelions are very nutritious and contain even more beta-carotene that carrots, more iron and calcium than spinach, and more potassium than bananas. ... Not only are they full of nutrients, dandelions are one of the favorites of most rabbits" .

They are a bit bitter but I add them to my salad also (I do not use any chemicals in my Garden or my yard)

My bunny when I was little. Parakeet & him were best buds Sorry I had trouble trying to paste the photo It came out bigger than I thought it would!

 

What I’m worried about is what type of green I might be missing!!! Yikes! She doesn’t always bounce when she goes lime so..... I wonder (or worry). But that PM +5 or +6 and on is my best chance to sleep a solid amount so I try. One of these days I’ll need to look into autofeeders!!!

 

@CandyH & Catcat yes, cannas!

@JoyBee&Ravan I would absolutely feed him dandelion flower/greens if I had any! I am sure he would love it. He enjoys mint and parsley and fresh sage (I don’t have any parsley or sage growing sadly), and loves various lettuces (never iceberg of course!). He’s a stinker though, and really he will eat almost anything you let him get near. But I do love him and we lost the other two bunnies last year so he’s our only one now.


Thank you all for the kind words regarding the loss of a friend—I never met him, but was there in support of someone else. I had never witnessed the Buddhist funeral rites before and it was interesting. Sometimes you learn a lot about someone’s life even after they are gone and it was a beautiful service. Clearly someone who was well-loved in this life.

Alice is up to her no good begging, roommate sent a message asking if it was okay to feed her earlier this afternoon. Yes, yes, it was okay.

 

Are you still following TR? If so, I think you're holding your doses too long. If nadirs are mostly below 200, you want to increase after 3 - 5 days. If you hold a dose that isn't getting numbers into normal range for too long, your cat's body starts to treat the highier numbers as the new "normal." If you stick with TR, just keep chipping away at increasing the dose and getting numbers into a range where you want them. You may need to use food to bolster the numbers and prevent a dose reduction so Alice gets. used to those lower numbers.

I don't think Alice saw particularly low numbers last night. The 103 may have been low enough to trigger a bounce although numbers may have dropped a bit lower. I suspect you'll see more bouncing due to the drop from the 418 to 277.

 

Thank you. I’m really only clear on reductions and I think once she hits long-term that changes too. But she is starting to border on being a little extra fluffy and she has never been overweight in her life so I was trying to reduce her from a full 3 cans of friskies and somewhere closer to 2 cans. I mean she is just under 8lbs and eating about 350 calories—twice her needs. But I can increase fit is warranted. Her shots got delayed yesterday though so I think I will wait a couple days since I will be shooting early and that can act like an increase. Thank you for re-explaining the bouncing.

 

@JoyBee&Ravan friend shared this purrrfect photo to go with our conversation!

 

By any chance are you conflating calorie and carbohydrates? You can certainly reduce the Alice's calories and they shouldn't have an effect on numbers. You may want to spread out her food if you do reduce the quantity. By spreading out her food into several (more?) small meals, she may not notice the decrease in quantity. There are some very low calorie foods you may want to consider. TikiCat is quite low in calories. It's not inexpensive but it's a good quality food.

There's a formula on Dr. Lisa's page that approximates the # of calories your cat would need. For Alice, at 8 lbs, she would need 233 calories/day. This is the section on Obesity on Dr. Lisa's website -- it may provide some helpful info if you want Alice to be less "fluffy."

With increases, if your cat isn't in normal numbers for the majority of the time, you increase the dose. If nadirs are mostly in the blues or blues and greens, you hold the dose for 5 days/10 cycles. If the numbers are higher, increase every 3 days/6 cycles. Once a cat is beyond the one year mark, reductions can be taken based on 2 options. Either the numbers need to dip below 40 or you want to see numbers drop into the 40 - 50 range on 3 separate occasions and then reduce the dose.

 

Did you see the photo of my Bunny ? I posted it above.

 

Oh no I guess it didn’t post on my end.

 

Carbs vs calories and the effect:
I assume, mathematically, that if Alice eats 300 calories of 5% carbs then she is getting 15 calories of carbs. She has X amount of insulin in her body. If she eats 400 calories of 5% carbs then she is getting 20 calories of carbs. She still has that same previous amount of insulin (X) either way. In this regard would this not have an effect on her blood glucose levels?

So I spread her food and everyone else’s into many, many small meals already. She will tell me when she is hungry, and when she is desperate and the world is dramatic, or when she’s hungry enough to start puking soon.
When she was starving from the inside out she was constantly hungry and she started eating so much so I think she is used to these larger amounts. She always wants more at once than the “regular” cats now, but she was always quite weight-regulated in the past with only free-feeding of dry food and occasional wet food and treats prior to DX.

She is getting 179 calories per can, so if she has 3 then that is 537!!! I think now that her weight is well-restored and her muscle tone has also improved a lot, that her caloric intake should decrease somewhat.

Unfortunately we can barely afford the friskies so I can’t explore a lot of other options right now.
Did tiki cat come in those pouches? My friend gave me some once and I remember she had horrible diarrhea from it. Too much fluid maybe? I am quite sure she has problems with a lot of different foods but her poops are getting really the healthiest they have looked in nearly a year so I feel like it’s not so bad.

Eta and thank you for the TR review. I am sure I second-guess myself when it comes to increasing. The human gave an increase this morning without me even knowing! Then her numbers were pretty great today. But I don’t think increasing the dose at the same time that I move the shot up is necessarily the best thing to do either, right?

 

The Tiki Cat that I used came in cans and was shredded chicken.

Perhaps adding water to Alice's food, if. you're not doing so already, will help. The water is good for her kidneys and will help to fill her. up a bit.

 

I do add water. Perhaps I’ll open up a bit of pumpkin to bulk up some of it???