Changing over to wet food-Need Advice

Good morning everyone,
I'm new to the website but I have had a diabetic cat for some time. So, I came across this website when my cat Milo was recently diagnosed with diabetes. I tried wet food with him and within a short period of time he no longer needed insulin. So, I'm here to see what I can do for my cat Laina who has been diabetic for some time. She is 8 y/o. She currently weighs about 20 pounds. I did get her to lose 2 pounds but she won't lose anymore. With the reading of all the articles about how bad the dry food is, I wanted to swtich her to wet food. So, she was eating Wellness Core dry food-1/2 cup a day. She usually gets 3 units AM and PM. I did read the articles about carbs and decreasing dosage but I want to make sure what I"m doing is right because I don't want to under feed her but I do want her to lose weight. I do home test her but can't do a curve until this weekend. I tested her last night before food and she was 364. I gave 1 and 1/2 units with 1/2 can of a 5.5 oz can of Wellness Chicken and 1/2 can of a 3 oz Blue Wellness chicken food. It's hard for me to know how much because I had a hard time getting the calories in the Wellness. I was guessing that she was getting around 283 calories a day but I"m not sure. She is on Lantus insulin.

I just dont want to under or over feed her and I really want her to lose weight. I know it's trial and error with the insulin and I can do that this weekend but I just wanted to see if anyone had any suggestions as to how much I should be feeding her. I don't want her to lose weight too rapidly either. I am assuming that she's going to take some time to adjust to the decrease in dose. I can always go up in dose if she needs to.

Sorry for babbling. I would ask my vet but he won't know. I have really had to figure this all out on my own.

Thank you for your imput,

Joy

 

The 1/2 of a 5.5 oz can together with 1/2 of 3 oz can twice a day should be about right. The key to determining the right about is to weight the cat each week and adjust the amount feed based on weight.

 

Hi Joy! Welcome to the website, you're in the right place!

Since your kitty is on Lantus, the lovely folks over in Lantus Land can definitely help you with appropriate dosages. Here is the link to the Lantus forum - http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/viewforum.php?f=9

Hometesting as you switch over to wet is definitely a good idea, because kitty will probably need less insulin on wet. It depends on the food, but I've heard about one 5.5oz can per day is reasonable. I aim for more than that, because my kitty lost a lot of weight and we're trying to fatten him back up. Have you seen Janet and Binky's Food Charts? Here's the link: http://binkyspage.tripod.com/canfood.html You can find info on % of carbs, calories, etc for lots of popular foods.

Hope that helps!

 

Hi JoBeth,

I have spent a lot of time obsessing over cat foods, and I looked through my notes and found Wellness Core Dry was 490 cal/cup. Sadly, I don't have noted where I got that from so it's reliability is not necessarily the best.

I also have a (formerly) severely overweight civvie that we have been working with for years to try to get to lose weight. She would always lose some, but seemed hungry all the time and never lost anywhere near what she needed to lose.

When her brother became diabetic and we switched to all wet (from 1/2 Wellness Core and 1/2 Dental Diet) she began to lose quite well. She seems to require fewer calories to be satisfied (she eats under 200 calories a day), is never hungry and the vet is delighted with her weight loss.

Best of luck with all this. It is like a full time job trying to keep up with cat foods!!

 

The directions for changing a dry food addict to wet food are at www.catinfo.org Take the time to read eerything on that site, it is solid gold information.