question about dry food diet

Hmm I'm not quite sure where to start.... My Sophie was diagnosed with diabetes earlier this year, the first thing i did was go straight to the Internet and i found this website, and i tell you this website had helped me in so many ways and also my veterinarian's office. As soon as i found this website, i learned everything i could, i switched Sophie right over to an all wet food diet but we have been having problems with it. What i want to know is if anyone here uses a dry food diet and if so what would be the best to give her? I have looked at the Food chart but i just want to know if anyone else here uses an all dry food diet?

 

What kind of problems are you having with a wet food diet? Wet is definitely the way to go, but not all wet foods are created equal.

 

With my own experiences, I found that often times it takes some experimenting with a variety of wet foods to find one that my cat will eat without issues.
Plus monitoring the BG numbers helps too. Trial and error you know? I went thru several brands of wet food to find the one that works best for my cat.

I know there is at least one member who does dry food (Susie & Moochie) ECID (every cat is different) it can work for some.
I will PM her for you to stop in and give you some insight.

I believe Wellness Core and EVO dry are a couple of somewhat "better" brands, but again, monitoring how those foods will affect your own cats numbers and progress on insulin would be important.

 

I'm curious about what type of problems you are having with the wet food as well.

I actually do feed my crabby old diabetic dry food but I can't in fairness recommend that you do the same. Dry food is undoubtedly a big part of what got most of us here with diabetic cats. Cats need to get their hydration more through food than through drinking water. You have probably already seen Dr Lisa Pierson's website but just in case you haven't...

http://catinfo.org/


I can tell you that there are grain free dry foods but they are still dry food. Personally I would experiment with various wet foods as has been suggested because there will be something out there that you can feed that is better than dry.

I definitely don't recommend what I feed Moochie. Moochie is 17 and has chronic pancreatitis and WILL NOT EAT WET FOOD so for various reasons she eats Purina Kitten Chow. Prior to her CP diagnosis I fed her Innova EVO, then Wellness CORE, then a couple of other grain free dry foods. They are options but I wouldn't head out to the store for them just yet.

Moochie is also still on insulin after nearly four years with diabetes and probably always will be. That's fine with me because she is who she is but I would strongly suggest that you give the wet food more time or check into feeding raw.

 

Most of the problem with the wet food is that she will always throw it up. There is nothing wrong with her stomach, the vet has checked up on her and she just has a sensitive tummy and it also gives her very bad diarrhea. I'm am currently feeding her Friskies Wet food. For her whole life she has always had problems with eating wet cat food, But i wanted to change her diet to just all wet because i thought it would help her. But its just not working out. I do test her everyday and i would continue to do that if i was going to start her on a dry diet to see how much her numbers would change. I just wanted the best advice that i could get before i decided on it.

 

Sensitive tummy?

My civvie (non diabetic) is like that.
Have you tried to warm up the wet food slightly?
Some of us add a little bit of warm water to "smell" it up a bit, and I've heard that it can be easier on sensitive tummy's .. with my civvie it turns out her food has to be room temp or slightly warm.
Ever since that experiment, no toss up's like she use to.

Hope you ca find a way around it. Keep trying!

 

I hope you are able to find a food that works for her without having to go for the dry. I understand your question by all means I just didn't want to make a dry food recommendation as such because I do truly believe that the wet food is better for them and what works for Moochie wouldn't work well at all for most diabetic kitties here.

I can say to you that the effect that various dry foods have on the blood glucose can vary greatly from cat to cat as well as from food to food. There are cats who can tolerate a steady diet of dry foods without a terrible rise in glucose levels but then there are those who cannot. Just as raw information goes some of the grain free foods like EVO and CORE have very low carb levels.

The apparent reason that Moochie does well on Kitten Chow is that she seems to be a CP kitty that the fat level in the food affects. Kitten Chow is pretty low fat but of course the loss of fat in the food is made up by additional carbohydrates - just like it in low fat human foods.

 

It could also be that your kitty has a sensitivity to one or more of the ingredients in the wet food you are using. The most common allergy is to grains and sometimes beef/red meat. My guess is the friskies food has wheat gluten or other grains in it. You might try one of the Fancy Feast grain free flavors (most of the classic flavors) or EVO/Wellness canned food. Also, adding a probiotic like Forti Flora to the food might help line up the gut bacteria so kitty can process the food better. Good luck!

 

My allergy kitty also will throw up food that isn't agreeing with him. It's been so long since that happened that I had forgotten about it. But some foods will come up almost at once. Some really "at once." Beef comes right back up. One urinary formula wet food (a chicken food) that we tried because the ingredients looked good - not because he needed a urinary formula - absolutely bounced: He threw it up right back into the bowl he was still eating out of. When I first got him, I gave him kitten chow (dry) because that is what I had and it was the weekend. It stayed down maybe 12 hours, then *all* came back up, undigested. He was all of 4 months old. The bigger problems didn't start until he was closer to 2 years old.

For him, a high-quality food without grains in the slightest amount made all the difference. It has been ages now since he puked. I actually can't remember the last time it happened. Before I had him on the Wellness, puking was a several-times-a-week-in-a-good-week event. In a bad week, it was several times a day. And if things got bad, he would get diarrhea. Then asthmatic coughing. What fun all that was! :?

For a long time I was convinced that he was allergic to chicken, which turned out to be an excellent food for him. All the other chicken flavors I had tried had other ingredients that got to him. I thought it was the chicken. Now I know it wasn't (but I still don't know what it was - beef is a no-no, but there has to be something else, because a lot of the foods that made him sick contained no beef.)

Keep trying various foods. I know how tempting it is to pin the problem on the most obvious thing - for me it was chicken, for you it is dry food - but that may keep you from discovering the real culprit (or discovering a "magical" solution).