Ruxpin's food allergies and health issues

With Ruxpin's diabetes and chronic upper respiratory currently under control (knock on wood), by far my biggest problem is his food allergies. I'm not taking about dermatitis and feline acne. I mean allergies that make his upper and/or lower lips puff up like balloons. I've spoken to the vet about it, and she said that normally they would give him a steroid shot when he has a flare up, but because of the diabetes they can't do that so the best thing I can do is keep trying to find a food that won't trigger it and that the antibiotics he's already on for his chronic rhinosinusitus should help.

He's had this problem since he was young (he's currently 11). None of this is a new development, it's just now become a problem because of the reliance on wet food. Dry food with the same proteins have never been an issue, but I had to stop feeding him wet food when he was young because of his allergies. I had other sick cats that needed wet food, so I would put their food on the counter where he couldn't reach as he's not much of a jumper. Unfortunately, now he needs the wet food. He'll be fine on a new food for a month or two, then he develops symptoms.

For a month or so I had him on two different types of the same brand (chicken and turkey) and he stated to flare up, and I noticed he was self-selecting the turkey and not eating the chicken, so I stopped feeding him the chicken. Face cleared up, everything looked good for a few weeks, and now his lower lip just started swelling up again last night. It's not cheap food either. Supposedly free of everything, no artificial anything.

It's so unbelievably difficult to find anything he'll even eat. He hates everything. He'll starve himself before he'll even try some of the other (even more expensive) brands I've bought in the past. I'm just kind of at a loss. I also have three other cats, which makes it more difficult.

Here's a picture of his current flare up from last night. And the second is one from October. He was not thrilled about having either picture taken.

 

As far as Ruxpin's other health issues, I don't use your Google docs spreadsheet, but I am using an app on my phone called Blood Glucose Tracker, a human diabetes app which is pretty nice. Lets me add readings quickly, I pay a small fee to back up to the web, there's also a manual backup option, I can export the data for any period to email to my vet who was pretty happy with it, and it graphs things up for me. Also keeps track of medications.

I use Alpha Trac 2 and the related test strips since that's what the vet uses and recommended. Keeps us apples to apples for his numbers.

Over the past few weeks he had some low readings that the vet told me to skip doses for, so his current insulin had actually dropped to one unit of Lantus twice a day. Since then he's been doing really well, and his numbers have been consistently between 100 and 200.

For his upper respiratory, he's currently on 50mg of doxycycline once a day and 62.5mg of azithromycin twice a week which seems to be keeping everything in check for the most part. He still has the occasional sneezing flare up, but nothing like the complete mess he was before we got it under control. It took a full course of azithromycin to really get things working, and ultimately that was also what got his body to start using the insulin.

It's amazing when you graph it up.
This is from the app. The little dip in October was switching from prozinc to Lantus. The big dip is when we got him on the azithromycin on 11/14. He was on 6 units of Lantus that weren't doing anything, and by the time I realized how well the antibiotics were working (doctor had me doing weekly tests) his blood sugar was 80. We immediately dropped it to four and kept dropping every few days when we realized how well he was responding. Last five tests are at one unit and she wants me to go back to weekly tests now.

 

I'm a newbie here, so take what I say with a grain of salt. I do NOT have much experience with sugar cats, but boy do I know about cats with food allergies.

There are still things to try, so don't give up! Ask your vet if Ruxpin can take Zyrtec with everything else that's going on. It might not fix everything, but it can really help. Sounds like he has a chicken allergy for sure, and that one is difficult. Cat food manufacturers tend to put it in everything. Even flavors that have nothing to do with chicken can have ingredients where chicken is hiding. Look for things like "poultry fat" or "poultry meal."

If there's no chicken hiding in there, there's another thing that can help. Vary the flavors so he isn't getting too much of any one kind of protein. For example, If he has turkey one meal, switch to beef the next, and something fishy after that. This way, if he has, for example, a mild allergy to turkey, he isn't getting enough to bother him. This variation might also help keep Ruxpin from developing new protein allergies.

There's another food allergy that is prominent in cats, and that's corn. With wet food, this isn't so much of a problem, except you might want to avoid types that have corn starch as a thickener. I have one boy with a big scary allergy to corn, and if I accidentally give him a can that has corn starch, that's enough to swell his bottom lip.

Chances are, you already know the above, but I wanted to help if I could. The first cat I had with a food allergy was around 20 years ago, and boy was it hard to find food with no chicken back then! Now, we have many choices. I know how frustrating it can be, but keep at it, and you'll find a method that works for Ruxpin. I'll be keeping you and Ruxpin in my happy thoughts.

 

To be brutally frank, most of the members who are experienced in the use of Lantus would be very hard pressed to give yu input on dosing given the lack of a spreadsheet. There is a wealth of experience and expertise on the Lantus board and we would be hamstrung to offer any help. The graph looks promising but we are very acclimated to using the spreadsheet. It also looks to me like you are testing infrequently. If no one has mentioned this to you, Lantus dosing is based on the nadir, not on the pre-shot numbers. Again, I can't ascertain when you're testing (either day or frequency within a day) based on the graph.

As far as allergies, have you tried novel proteins? I realize you mentioned Ruxpin is a picky eater. If you've not tried ZiwiPeak, they have several novel protein options as well as they do not use gums, carageenan, fillers or grains in their foods.