It's days like this that make me feel like I have no idea what we're doing.
Jenks was out milling around early this morning, which is usually the sign he gives to OH saying that he's going low. I was still up, so I sat down with him to get a +2. Yep, despite a healthy portion of breakfast food just two hours before the test, he was already down nearly 30 points and was flirting with going under 50. What to do?
None of the options at this point are really attractive.
I could feed him. But he just ate two hours ago, and despite being a big cat, he doesn't have a large appetite so he'd probably just take a couple nibbles and push it away, wasting both time and food.
I could give him dry treats. These are usually good for a 10 point boost. But they're really not good for him and I don't want him to develop a habit of expecting treats all the time to the point where he decides he can just skip wet food.
Or, I could give gravy. Gravy is good for a pretty quick boost. He likes it. But it doesn't address the underlying issue.
I picked gravy. During the 10 days OH was gone, gravy was always successful in picking his numbers up to the perfect safe point and letting him surf there for the remainder of the cycle.
Not today though!
OH checked back in two hours later and Jenks crashed to 36. Yep, 79 to 36 through both a feeding and gravy. OH gave him food (which he ate happily) and a chaser of some dry treats (because at this point, why not?).
Even with all of that it still took him a long time to come up. He was 45 at midcycle. Things were up and up in a big way after that, as you can see from a second straight night of cruddy PMPS numbers.
I don't know why he's doing this, which means I have no way of competently addressing it.
During OH's ten days away, I had my fair share of 40s and even a couple dips into the 30s. But it was no big deal. A little gravy and a little food here and there would bring him up and keep him surfing in picture perfect numbers more of less. Now that OH is home however, those same techniques have lost their effectiveness. Yeah, they can still bring the numbers up, but now they also make him rebound in a much bigger way and regulating Jenks becomes very difficult when he starts to yo-yo.
So what do I do?
Right now he's in a pattern where he accelerates his decline as the night wears on and then plunges after AMPS. I can't feed him later in the night cycle because then he won't want to eat breakfast. I can't feed him shortly after breakfast because he's full from just having eaten. I dropped the dose again to 5.25U against my better judgment because the rising PMPS numbers need as much attention as the sinking post-AMPS nadirs. It's like I'm darned if I do and darned if I don't and that's really frustrating. Am I just going to have to nurse him along with gravy for hours at a time? To what end?
