Hello! and...Help with Diet Please..Homecooking?

Hello All - Just wanted to introduce myself and my diabetic cat...which I guess my user name does. I'm Anne and Muffin is my cat. She's just turned 6 yrs old and was diagnosed on June 30 of this year. She was initially put on 2.5(not sure what the measurement is) of insulin and has now had her first curve test and was lowered to 2. This is really a stressful experience, at least in the beginning, isn't it? My main concern with Muffin so far is changing her diet. Let me start by saying that she eats Fancy Feast dry food Filet Mignon with Seafood and Shrimp flavor. She is extremely picky and stubborn about eating. When she first started the insulin she wouldn't eat at all, so I cooked her chicken breasts and she did eat that. I've tried the Hill's m/d dry, I've tried EVO dry. Even with less than 5% of these new foods in the bottom of the bowl completely covered by her Fancy Feast, she turns up her nose and refuses to eat at all. I've been doing some research online about cats diets (both with and without regard to diabetes) and am coming to understand how important it is to get her off of the Fancy Feast. However, I'm not having any luck so far. My vet gave me a homecooking recipe with ground turkey...I cooked just plain ground turkey and NONE of my cats would eat it. So my plea for today is...does anyone know where to find other homecooked recipes? Maybe made with chicken? I was reading Dr Lisa Pierson's recipe for raw feeding...does anyone do raw feeding? Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks so much and nice to meet you all.

 

Re: Hello! and...Help!

Hello Anne & Muffin welcome to this beautiful and awesome site.. First what kind of insulin are you using...I am only been here6 weeks but my Trey is coming down so good One day at a time for sure. Fancy Feast is one of my best can food I am finding out that most fish has very few carb so is really good for them. Are you still feeding dry cat food We have to get rid of that if you are.. My Trey is so much better without dry food all my 4 cats are totally Fancy Feast and Friskies I live in Canada .Anything you need to know just put it in your subject line and someone will help It is awesome ...Anyway welcome and things will be better for you now that you found this place LOL Prayers & Angels right with you all the LOL Kath

 

Re: Hello! and...Help!

Hi Anne, and welcome to the board. Sorry you have to be here but you are in the best place to help Muffin.
Yes, the dry stuff is bad for diabetic cats, as you know. I can't give you any advice on any raw diets - wish I knew myself! But I wanted to say hang in there, lots of people do the raw diet. Maybe add something to the title saying "help with raw diet?" and some of those that can help will see it better.

We understand how stressful it is in the beginning - you are not alone, so ask as many questions as you have.
Good luck!

 

Re: Hello! and...Help with Diet Please

Hi Kath and Jayne, thanks for the welcome. The trouble is Muffin hates canned food. She won't eat anything that's even soft, like a soft treat. I can't even get her to eat plain tuna. Yet she loves taco bell, lunch meat, things like that, which is why i'm thinking I'll probably have to go the home cooked route. I'm going to try ground chicken today, but my expectations are low since she wouldn't touch the ground turkey. Is there a better way to cook it other than like hamburger? Maybe so the texture is different? She seems to be very texture-oriented. Should I try it raw? I'm so confused, and going out of town in 2 weeks, so need to get her on a good diet before then.

Oh, and she's on Lantus every 12 hrs.

 

Re: Hello! and...Help with Diet Please

Here are tips on how to get stubborn dry food addicts to eat canned food: http://www.catinfo.org/docs/TipsforTran ... -18-09.pdf Be patient and persistent with the food transition. Some really stubborn cats may take months to even begin to accept canned food.

Maybe raw food will work? If your cat won't eat raw, you can try cooking it first and then slowly decrease the cooking time until your cat is eating just raw.

Another way it to mix something like Feline Future into the raw meat ( http://www.felinefuture.com/ ). Feline Future is a pre-mix with all the vitamins and minerals your cat needs. The pre-mix alone is very tasty to many cats so it may work to get your cat to eat raw. There's a cooked recipie that you can use if you prefer not to start on 100% raw: http://www.felinefuture.com/?p=1400

Did you try simmering the ground turkey until it is just cooked through? My cat loved ground chicken prepared that way. He loved the cooking liquid too so I saved it and used it as a "gravy" on top of canned food.

 

my cats and dog does not like ground turkey but Chichen is great no problem there lol

 

Ok, the ground chicken isn't working either...Muffin is still opting for the dry fancy feast. Any suggestions / ideas would be really helpful at this point.

 

I purchased Feline's Pride raw as my test to see if I could get my cats interested. Two of them ate it.

So, now I'm making my own homemade raw, based off of a friend's recipe. Before you go down the path of making your own as you will need a grinder and other supplies, try one of the commercial raw foods.

The one Squeeme mentioned is an option as well as the one Dr. Lisa recommends Feline's Pride - it is $$, but it is quality and they ship it well so you don't have to worry about spoilage.

 

I grind my own boneless, skinless chicken and use the Feline Future pre-mix. It's a powder with all of the supplements noted on Dr. Lisa's page. It's my understanding that she based her supplement recommendations on their formula. Like Hillary, I bought the Feline's Pride as a trial to see if my cats would eat it. They liked it and I did purchase it for a while. Once shipping is added in, it becomes an expensive proposition which is why I switched to making my own. I also sampled another raw product but the Feline's pride was a much better quality.

 

Not sure if you read how :mrgreen: to do the change over dry to wet check out lots of hints under the Health in Board index Good luck LOL Kath

 

Besides the other good suggestions here for feeding raw, I am going to second the suggestion to try the Feline's Pride just to see if you can get her switched over before buying all your own supplies.

Looks like you are in Northern California? They have a number of distributors in California. The link to the site is in my signature below.

I sympathize with having a picky eater especially when you are having to deal with juggling the food along with the insulin shot. It took me six months to get Tigger off dry food in the beginning. That was a good while ago and then we successfully got him transitioned to raw about three years ago. He has been much healthier ever since.

ETA - In the meantime have you tried sprinkling Parmesan cheese over her food (the one that comes in the green can)? That works for a lot of cats.

 

Thanks everyone for all your help. She did finally eat some of the chicken. I will try the parmesan cheese idea, tho, too. And the Feline's Pride sounds like a great idea - I'll order the sample of that to try. I'm newly determined to improve all 4 of my cats' diets after all the reading i've done today!