Just starting-Have Questions

OUR SITUATION:
My cat Lamborghini is a 12 year old male. He is not definitively diagnosed as diabetic, but the vet says it is probable, as his glucose level was 240, and a couple of years ago there was a result that was also a bit higher than should be.
However, along with the diabetes possibility, his bloodwork showed he is severely hyperthyroid. His bloodwork showed a T4 of 14.4. We only found all this out yesterday. Vet has given us medicine for that (the gel stuff that goes in his ear) and a bag of insanely priced Purina DM food, dry, and told us to use Fancy Feast Classics for wet food. His kidney tests look fine, his liver tests show some that are somewhat high. But from what I read, hyperthyroid can artificially elevate liver tests, and suppress signs of kidney damage, so we can't trust either yet.
A few years ago Lambors had one episode of urinary tract sludge, and we were told to put him on the Purina UM food. He has been fine since then.

We have another cat, Ferrari, a 12 year old female. Both cats have dry food available at all times, and get a portion of wet food twice a day, at the same time our two dogs get breakfast and dinner. Dry food is in a cage with a cat-sized entrance, to keep the dogs from it, tho one dog is somehow able to make herself amazingly cat-sized when she really wants to (she's 17 inches tall at the shoulder, weighs 33 pounds, but with a skinny build can somehow squeeze herself through a cat door when she wants to). Wet food is given in the kitchen, right at our feet, so we can guard them from the dogs.

THE QUESTIONS
Just recently I have learned just how awful dry food is for cats. Three previous cats, over the years, each lived to 19 years old on just plain, cheap, grocery store, dry cat food, with no problems, so we never thought twice about it. Now I have a severely ill cat, who happens to be my son's most precious pet (of all the animals in our house, it HAS to be this one!) and we have to figure this out, quickly. But I'm not sure radical food changes are a good idea right now, until we get his thyroid under control.

So...I need suggestions for an acceptable dry food (for now, while we work on stabilizing things) that doesn't cost more than the food we feed the people in the house. That Purina DM cost us $60 for 10 pounds, that's insane!! Especially because, as I read the label, it has corn gluten meal and corn starch in it! And the "meat" is poultry by product meal! Cheap fillers, and bad carbs, so how do they justify $6 per pound for it? Can someone recommend something better, or at least equivalent but cheaper?

I know we need to get the cats off dry food. It's just going to take time, since we have the thyroid issues to deal with, and then the logistics of two dogs vs deliciously smelly wet cat food.

What about this one?
Nutrisca Grain-Free Chicken Recipe Dry Cat Food ( https://www.chewy.com/nutrisca-grain-free-chicken-recipe/dp/51875 ) From what I read there in the ingredients, it seems like it would be better than the Purina DM, and the price is certainly good. It says it's low glycemic index food, is that true, or are they just throwing out buzzwords to make a sale?

How do you tell the carbohydrate content of cat food? They don't list it. Is there a way to calculate it? Does the glycemic index thing matter at all, or not really?

Healthwise--could the high blood sugar reading be a result of the hyperthyroid condition? Reading about how that can change liver results and hide kidney problems, I wonder what else might settle down, or kick up, as we change his thyroid function back towards normal. We will still be changing diet, as better safe than sorry, and clearly he does not have a strong physiology going on here. Just wondering what to expect, as being hit with all this news yesterday was quite the shock, we had brought him in because we thought maybe he just had a urinary issue again.

 

Hi and welcome to FDMB. Love your kitties names!

Lamborghini's BG while high, isn't that high and assuming that reading was taken at the vet's office, it's likely a bit elevated due to vet stress. Some cats' BG elevates by 100 points (some even more) just due to vet stress. Given you are currently feeding some dry food that is over the 10% carbs recommended for diabetics, the best thing to do, would be to replace the Purina DM with a strictly canned diet for the kitties. Fancy Feast Classics are a great choice. That would eliminate sneaky canine shenanigans too.

If that is not possible, there are a limited number of low carb dry foods, assuming you are in the US. There is Young Again (available online only), Dr. Elsey's Clean Protein and Wysong Epigen 90. All of these foods seem expensive but they are extremely calorie dense so kitty doesn't eat the quantity they would of cheaper filler laden foods. All of these companies will send you samples to try so you don't have to fork over a pile of cash only to find out how finicky your felines are.

The hyperthyroidism definitely can have an effect on diabetes as both are part of the very complex endocrine system. Your goal is going to be getting enough calories into Lamborghini to maintain his weight given the hyperthyroidism while keeping his BG within normal range. Keeping the carb % of his food down, should help immensely at either keeping diabetes at bay or minimizing its effects as uncontrolled diabetes like hyperthyroidism, generally leads to weight loss too. Some diabetic cats are totally diet controlled so making those diet changes now will help address that potential health issue while you work on regulating his thyroid.

Don't be fooled by the term "low glycemic". It is just a buzzword and marketing ploy and does not mean the food is particularly low carb although it's probably somewhat lower carb than most dry foods. The only way to determine the % carbs in a food are to get the "As Fed" values from the manufacturer and then do some fancy calculations on those values. HERE is some info on how carbs are calculated. A quick non-scientific calc. of the food you mentioned suggests it's likely around 20% carbs based on the nutritional info on Chewy.

 

This is the wet food chart if you are in need of low carb cans. I’m sorry your kit isn’t feeling well! I hope things settle down for you when your thyroid kitty begins taking his meds. I also had a hyper T cat and I tried the transdermal gel in the ear. She had sensitive ears & soon had to go to the pill. I just crushed it up & added to her wet food. She ate it up so thank goodness I didn’t have to pill her. I also found that the gel just didn’t control her numbers as well as the pill. Every cat is different so I wish you luck! We use the Dr. Elseys clean protein chicken at our house for treats & munching. Best wishes to you & your babes!
https://catinfo.org/docs/CatFoodProteinFatCarbPhosphorusChart.pdf

 

Thank you! Getting to an all-canned food diet will be difficult, mostly because of the dogs. Lamborghini will generally eat anything. He tries to eat the dog's food, right out of their bowls while they are eating it. He was "our dog" until we got dogs. I'm worried about pulling a big change on his food while we are going through the thyroid issues, might just tip him over the edge? The diabetes had been mentioned before, but never came up definitive. Generally, this is a no-stress cat, there's not a whole lot of brain function going on in him, so he doesn't think enough about his situation to stress over it.

We're thinking better to feed him as if he is diabetic, and maybe keep him from getting worse, as he obviously does not have a great health profile to begin with. Certainly won't hurt him, right? Or the other cat, Ferrari, either, she's the same age, and on monthly steroid injections for severe environmental allergies (nothing else worked. We know it's probably going to be bad, long term, but she was just miserably existing before them.) so she's at risk, too.

We are upping the amount of wet food given for breakfast and dinner, when the dogs are also fed and we can control who eats whose food (cats eat in the kitchen with us between them and the dogs who are fed outside the kitchen). Hoping that will decrease the amount of dry they eat. At the same time, if we improve the dry food they eat, it won't be so bad for them with what they do eat in between. Their dry food is in a cage I created with cat-sized door openings, to keep the dogs from it. Barely works as one dog is slender and tricky. In order to be able to leave wet food out, I have to invent a much better food cage, but no so difficult to access that neither we nor the cats can get into it.

Right now, Lamborghini has lost weight, and you can feel all the bony ridges on his head and shoulder blades and spine. Somehow, his measured weight, while it has gone down, is not that low as you'd suspect from what you feel under his fur, is why he evidently hid this for a while. He's now 11.7 pounds, had been running in the upper 12's to 13, and in the past had hit 14 but he was definitely chubby then. When he came back from his day at the vet's for testing and urinalysis (due to job we had to just drop him off for the day), he seemed okay, but a few hours later was barely walking with his back legs down flat as he butt-shuffled along. Now, a day and a half later, he's still weak but at least back up to proper posture. Vet's only explanation is "stress", since he has been improving, and isn't concerned. (I think we may need a better vet?) I'm worried.

Do you know the carb % for the Purina DM food? (I have vision problems and saw the calculations instructions, but am too wonky-eyed from trying to research all this to deal with it just yet.) Their protein numbers and all seem good, but their ingredients are appalling. yet somehow it seems like everyone's vets are pushing the stuff at them.

 

Becky &, we're hoping the ear gel works. Since he is 12, it seems it's in the iffy range for getting the radioactive iodide thing done--if he was younger, definitely worth it, if he was older, definitely not. If I had a spare $2000-$3000 dollars laying around, I'd go for it. But I don't, and with his other possible health problems, it might just be a waste, anyway. And I don't want to put the cat through tortuous medical stuff without it really being worth it for him.

 

The Purina DM dry food I believe is 14% carbs. Most of us try to keep the carb % in our kittie's diets below 6% but anything up to 10% is considered acceptable. Some cats are more carb sensitive than others but in many cases dropping the carb lower even a small amount will help lower BG to some degree.

Lamborghini may be a chill cat, not too stressed out at the vet, but if you left him there all day, you just don't know if something might have had him stressed when the BG was done like a big dog barking or such. I wouldn't be so sure there wasn't some degree of stress in that number.

Just wondering if your vet also ran a Fructosamine test to confirm the suspected diabetes. That test measures to get an average BG over a period of 2 to 3 weeks and would be far more accurate for a diagnosis than one BG test taken in the vet's office.

The other option if you wanted to pursue it, would be to learn to test Lamborghini's BG at home. You could monitor him in the comfort of his own home and get readings that are definitely not stress elevated. We can help you learn how to test if you'd like to try that.

 

@Gracie85 - yes my Lizzie was 12. I wanted to do the surgery or iodine but I just didn’t have the spare $ at that time. The pills worked fine, so that is the way we went. She lived till 17.5 years & then was dx with breast cancer. She had a very good life!
When introducing any new food it is best to start out very slow. My cat has IBD so I really have a hard time getting her to eat what’s best for her. Picky miss! I know it’s all overwhelming but if you choose to test at home, it will be more accurate. Most vets are not really knowledgeable on feline diabetes- I’ve learned the majority of info on this forum. Ask questions & someone is always willing to help.

 

Vet did not run a fructosamine at the time. Don't know why. He mentioned it, but didn't do it. Says we can run it when we bring him in next week for a thyroid check, to see how much effect starting the thyroid medicine is having. Starting that at half strength to see how he responds, then will probably increase dosage, as with his numbers I can't see that he would get by on the small dose. Lambors' BG was fine for his first, oh, 10 years or so, since then it sometimes is high when he goes to the vet, that started when he had the urinary tract problem that one time, but it seems to be fairly consistent since then. He has only gone to the vet once a year for vaccinations, then in between only if there's been a problem. Now we have problems.

Got to Petco today and bought a whole case of varied flavors of Fancy Feast classic pate, as it was on sale. So, let the wet food feasting begin! He will eat up to half a can (the small ones) of FF at a meal at this point. Ferrari eats less, about half that, at a time. Will work on increasing that, but they've both been grazing on dry for the last 12 years, so aren't used to eating large amounts at any time.

Is it possible to just have them eat two large wet food meals a day, or do we have to do more frequently? Logic tells me that with diabetes, many smaller feedings are better, but life says "ha, like that'll happen".

 

It's possible to feed two large meals a day but that doesn't work if you have kitties who prefer to graze which it sounds like yours do. Smaller more frequent meals do generally work better for diabetics but that can be problematic when you have a multiple pet household and aren't home everyday to play cafeteria monitor.

Some folks use automatic feeders like PetSafe to dish out meals when they are not home. There are also feeders that come with microchip readers so they can be programmed to only open for a specific pet but they are a bit pricy. Others will freeze food into ice cubes trays and leave it out to thaw for when kitty gets hungry later in the day but I'm guessing that trick probably wouldn't stop the pups from wolfing the food down though.

 

Another problem with an automatic feeder is making sure both cats get enough food, and we don't end up with one fat cat and one starved cat. As well as we have one big brute and one small genius cat, and it seems the PetSafe is easily defeated by both types, let alone if my wild-child dog should ever get at it. The dogs love ice cubes, so that approach will require a much better cat cage/maze set up to keep them from it, as they'd never get a chance to melt. I am going to have to put some work into this.
I am home most of the day most of the time. Disabled, so sometimes it just hurts so much to get up and move, but If I have to, I have to. On days I am out, they will have to just deal with the altered schedule. Maybe I get a timer for me, to remind me when it's time to get up and feed the cats some more, and plan out some way to distract the dogs long enough to let the cats eat. I'm up north, so with winter coming I can't count on tossing the dogs outside every time, looks like we still need a modified cat food cage with easier access for more frequent feeding (right now someone just has to fill the bowls once a day, so getting down to floor level and reaching inside it is not so bad).
So, I guess my plan is to:
Keep upping the amount of good wet food, hoping that alone decreases the amount of dry they eat,
Switch to the best dry food we can find and afford until hopefully we can phase it out
Develop whatever feeding techniques and devices needed to make sure that each pet gets to eat their own food but no one else's
Monitor Lamborghini's diabetes/potential diabetes as we also monitor his thyroid and hope it gets better, not worse
Try not to lose my mind attempting to absorb so much information so quickly.

 

Well I don't have any dogs to worry about but I do deal with one cat who likes to pilfer (diabetic in remission), another who capitulates to the pilfer cat and a geriatric guy who walks away from his bowl and then can't find it leaving it easy game for Miss Pilfer. Miss Pilfer of course wolfs her food down while the two boys graze away and take forever to eat their portions if they finish them in one go at all.

Food for thought..... Any high places you could allow the cats to eat where the dogs wouldn't be able to access the food? A high baby gate the dogs can't get over but the kitties can?

I truly empathize with the problem you are facing. There are folks here with both dogs and cats. Perhaps if you post for suggestions on how to deal with your situation, you'll get some ideas to help you sort this out.

 

Thanks for your replies. Luna can fly. From a dead standstill, she can leap higher than my head. With a running start, (and she runs like a greyhound), I have seen her clear 15 feet forward at about 3-4 feet high. She is amazing. And a real problem to deal with, as she's also slender enough to squeeze through a cat door when she wants, and if there's food, she wants.
I have a couple really big bird cages that are not in use right now, trying to figure out how to make them work for us. Lamborghini and Ferrari don't really like each other, but they have agreed to disagree and mostly live peacefully. Lambors is already learning to eat a big bowl of canned food at once, when he's hungry he will already eat a whole can of FF. But it takes him a while, as he tries to just lick it up, not bite into it, so he also makes a huge mess. (Good thing about also having dogs, when Lambors had pushed his food off the plate and over about 4 square feet of kitchen floor, once he was done I just let the dogs in and they cleaned the floor right up for me. ha ha ha oh gross dog slobber.) Now experimenting with different plates, bowls, trays, to control things. He is enjoying the increase in wet food so much that he will overeat if given too much, found him, just after being fed, sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor hovering over a small puddle of freshly upchucked FF in water. Couldn't have been in his stomach more than 30 seconds, from the looks of it. He started to come over to me to be petted, than ran back to stand guard over his precious food again, twice. He didn't know what to do!!! He wanted to eat it again, but was just too full. He actually seemed relieved when I wiped it up, then he happily left the kitchen. At least there is humor in this whole stressful situation.
Ferrari eats a small amount then just walks away, leaving food behind, so she's going to be the one slowing our progress on eliminating dry food. And I am guessing we will need two cat cages, or at least a divided one to make it difficult for Lamborghini to eat Ferrari's portion. And to keep him from trapping her either inside or outside of the cage, as he is kind of a jerk and likes to lay in front of things to keep her from getting to them.
Geez, who would have thought that the hardest part of this is not the medical stuff?