7/18 Perry AMPS 472, +4 313, +6 286, +9 209 | PMPS 218, +3 151

Hoping Perry drops below 300 in a bit here. Despite today's numbers (and the AMPS is food-influenced, once again, but the automatic wet-food feeder is on the way!), I think his averages are trending downward. This morning was the first time I woke up to an untouched litter box -- no peeing in the middle of the night. And I haven't seen this cat take a drink in days. Really hope I'm not jinxing us by saying that out loud.

Also, the baby scale arrived a few days ago, so we can track his weight better now. I'd love to see this cat put on another half a pound.

Snuggles to all the sugar kitties out there!

 

Awesome news about the litter box! Mowgli is still peeing a TON! but he doesn't drink as much, I think it's just the switch from dry to wet food

Bring it down Perry... no need to be wearing those pink and red rags... not. your. color.

Have a great day Jenn

 

He's back in yellow now.

 

I hope Perry keeps sliding down for you.

 

209 at +9. Been wanting to catch him at a later time after getting that 90 the other day. Very interesting! Have to run out for work, so I won't get to track his rise today, but this has been informative.

 

PMPS wasn't much higher than that AM +9, and his PM +3 was 151! A little bit worried about how low he'll go tonight, but we just fed him a big dinner, and we know food has a big effect on his BG. And we leave food out overnight. But I have a feeling I'll still be checking on him in the middle of the night tonight.

 

My concern would be the late nadir on 7/16 in the afternoon. I don't see great patterns in the spreadsheet yet. If he has late nadirs at night, that would be the concern. Otherwise 151 would be fine if he does a stable curve down to 120 or 100.

I'm not familiar with those foods. Are they all generally low carb? Is Perry eating pretty regularly? Has he lost any weight in the last few months?

I'm going to bed for tonight. Feel free to tag me on dailies. Seems we have an influx of somewhat new people here. Nice spreadsheet maintenance. That's a cute pic of Perry.

 

@JeffJ I was wondering if there were a lot of new folks or if this was normal. Seemed like quite a few fellow cat guardians posted intros the week I joined!

Thanks so much for the tip that I should keep an eye on him this afternoon. I'll do that. It's so nice to have folks here looking out for us, thank you!

The food question requires a long response, I'm afraid.

I just realized I need to update my signature, because Perry's main food right now is a ProPlan True Nature that comes in at 6% carb. After DX, we immediately got him off kibble and I was keeping his carbs below 4%, but his picky eating was making us change up his food often (he went thru just about every flavor below 4% of FF, TikiCat, Fussie Cat, Weruva Cats in the Kitchen, Weruva originals, Dr. Elsey's, Nulo, Ziwi, the new Stella & Chewy's, and I suspect) ... which eventually led to a nasty case of constipation that required an enema. It was awful (I posted about it here), and after that, the vet convinced me to put him on Purina DM just to get him on something consistently. It worked, he loved it, but I don't think she realized there are two types of DM, and Perry only eats the one that Dr. Lisa's chart says is 10% as fed. Sigh. It's high, but he loved it, and his BMs were regular on it.

However, when he was running high numbers a few weeks back, I tried giving him the Weruva we still had on hand (2% carb as fed) that he'd eaten somewhat consistently. I've been giving him that when he was high on the curve and DM when he was low. So far, no constipation problems (which I'm very wary of now. I mean I am on poop patrol daily here). That's been working well, but Weruva switched this formula from aspic to gelee, and he rejects the new stuff outright. So I bought every can of tuna and chicken in aspic I could get my hands on and started looking for other options he would eat consistently.

I decided to look for something in the 5-6% range in gravy or sauce, because this kitty laps up the DM sauce like it's the best thing ever. After consulting the chart, I tried the ProPlan True Nature Salmon and Catfish in sauce (6% as fed), and he's been really into that, and his BMs are still regular. Would I love to get him on something lower carb? Absolutely. But we were coating his food in yeast flakes and bonito and FortiFlora (I think I have the 'tricks for getting your cat to eat' sticky memorized) and begging him to eat as he lost weight, and then the enema happened. Now, he's happy with his food, and I'm not worried that he's still losing weight just because he won't eat enough.

We still leave DM out for him overnight, because it's the only food I've tried freezing into a meat popsicle that he'll eat when it thaws. However, the wet food feeder arrives this weekend, and he's eating the ProPlan even when it's cold (a lot of foods we've tried, he only eats it fresh out of the can at room temperature. Refrigerate it and he won't touch it, even if you heat it up), so we'll see where this goes. I'm still on the lookout for something even lower carb, of course, but so far, my picky kitty is staying true to his picky ways.

 

The 10% carbs will be a challenge going forward. But I'm familiar with picky cats. We tried everything with Leo and sometimes had 10 foods out, but he had other issues as well. I saw the enema post before, and it is good that issue is resolved. We also had that issue with Leo, but didn't have to get to enemas.

It will be harder to regulate Perry on a food with carbs like that. Maybe over time you could mix in lower carb food. One big goal of diabetes mgmt is proper nutrition and maintain weight. It sounds like you are doing your best.

Is anyone else already helping you? If not, you can tag me and we'll try to get Perry into better numbers.

Please take the "*" off the AMPS readings in the last few days - so the colors will show properly.

 

Yep, I know it. The goal is to get him off that food. And the transition onto the 6% ProPlan is going well so far. He ate two small cans of it yesterday!

I dropped the asterisks on the AMPS numbers to remind myself that those are very much food-influenced numbers. Perry is just hungry in the 4 a.m. hour no matter what. When we first brought him home from the shelter, I would wake up around that time and hear him in the other room crunching away on his kibble, then he'd come back to bed. I don't really want to fight a habit he's had for years, in part because he'll just wake us if he's hungry, but I don't know how to get a clean AMPS without cutting him off at 4 a.m.-ish (we shoot at 6 a.m.). Thoughts?

Thanks so much for the offer to tag you, I'll take all the help I can get! Our vet has been a great partner in this, but day to day, the community here has been invaluable.

 

Sorry - no easy solution to the morning munchies. We also had that issue with Leo (and non diabetic Little Dude). We made them wait until dose time. Then the food - kind of a reward for waiting.

Over time with Leo, we let him free feed because he had eating issues. His AMPS number varied, but we were able to get clean numbers about half the time.

 

Well at least we aren't alone in this! Getting a clean PMPS is easier: I feed him a bit 2:30 before and he's good to go. If Perry's really hungry in the morning, though, he's fidgety about testing, so it's really a trade-off. At the same time, I have been amazed at how quickly he has gotten used to sitting in the kitchen to wait for his test. He's really a good guy.

I just realized that you recently lost your sweet kitty, Jeff. I'm so sorry.

 

Some re-training goes hand-in-hand with diabetes mgmt. If you have a good guy like Perry (or Leoberry) to start with, then they adapt pretty quickly.

Thanks Jenn. The years with Leo seemed to go by so quickly. We picked up his ashes in a nice wooden box yesterday. We miss him so much.
Leo's Eulogy