? Wet Food & Pumpkin Questions

We are pretty much ready to pick up some wet food to start the switch to it, and I was hoping you guys could help me with figuring out how many times a day we should feed Victor and how much. He currently weighs 12.7 pounds and according to our vet, his ideal weight is 10 pounds. We will be getting Fancy Feast Classics, and I have looked at the Food Chart and seen the calories for it, but I am honestly terrible at math so I would really appreciate it if I could get some help with this. Are there any varieties/flavors of FF Classics that we should avoid?

Also, Victor has still been having issues with constipation and we picked up some canned pumpkin yesterday (the label says 100% pure pumpkin and the only ingredient listed is pumpkin, so I assume it's the correct kind to use), and I wanted to know how much we should put in his food, and should it be added to all of his meals or only one?

 

All the ff classics are fine to give. The rule of thumb is 20 calories per pound of ideal weight. So for your cat if 10 lbs then that's about 200 calories... About 2 1/4 cans a day... However unregulated cats sometimes need more. I'd probably start with 2.5 cans split into a few meals and see how he does.

Id probably try giving a teaspoon of pumpkin twice a day.

 

And if you want to try Friskies pates sometime, they're roughly 200 calories per 5.5 oz. can. The best way to deal with a kitties weight loss is to start with a reasonable amount of food (using Janet's rough calculation) and weigh him weekly to see what's happening. You want the weight loss to be s-l-o-w so think a year to get to a good weight, not a few months. If your weekly weighings show he's maintaining or gaining alter the amount of food you're feeding.

Do the food switch in fractions over about a week and be prepared to check BG frequently. His dry food is much higher carb than Fancy Feast pate and there might be a significant effect on BG that could require dose reductions.

Re flavours, pumpkin, etc.: we usually recommend giving fish flavours only once or twice a week. Janet has recommended giving pumpkin twice a day. Try feeding him more small meals a day though - maybe 4. Also try getting him used to having a tablespoon or two of water added to his wet food. It can help a lot with hydration (big factor in diabetic cats because glucose in their bloodstream draws water out of them into their urine so they lose water easily) and constipation.

 

Some cats actually like the taste of pumpkin. Bama does and will lap it up by itself. You could offer a little to Victor on a spoon to see if he likes it. If so, you can feed some of it at the end of a meal. Sort of like dessert. Otherwise, you may have to mix it into his wet food. It also works well to add a spoonful of water to it so he can just drink it. [I'm always adding a little water to whatever little bits of food are left in Bama's bowl to encourage him to lick his bowl clean.] One can will last a long time if Victor is the only one in the household eating it. It will keep a week or so in the refrigerator. To avoid waste you can freeze it in small ziplock containers or snack bags or ice cube trays and take out a few at a time as you need them. Freezing does change the consistency somewhat but Victor probably won't mind. Personally, I add it to my oatmeal or smoothies so Bama and I use up a can within a week or ten days so I rarely have any left to freeze.

If you are splitting his meals into 4 per day, you may want to feed larger meals just before shot time and smaller meals before or near nadir.

 

@Kris & Teasel Just did Victor's AMPS test and the first result was 217, so we retested and it was 278. Should we still give his full dose?

 

Did you stall 20 minutes or so between the two tests? If so, it looks like BG is rising. Have you made the planned dietary changes, yet? Looking at your SS from 8-12-18, your pmps was 278 and you shot 2 u, then @ +2 he was 345 then @+4 he was 368. On 8-1-18 you had an amps of 269, shot 3.5 and got some blues in the hours following. Maybe try 3.5, assuming dietary changes have not begun.

 

No we didn't stall between the tests because he was really fighting us this morning while trying to get his test done in the first place. Since we didn't stall between the tests there's no way to know if his level is closer to 215 or 278 and if he's closer to 215 I didn't know if it would still be safe to give him his shot at all or what reduced dose would be safe to give. We have not changed his diet yet

 

I'm just seeing this now. If you're planning on starting the food switch today or tomorrow you could lower the dose to 3 u in anticipation of the effect of low carb food on his BG. If you aren't starting for a while yet this is a prime opportunity to test your nerves and give the full dose. If he drops the desired 50% at nadir you're still within the ideal nadir range of around 100. The only way to get used to these situations is to face them head on. If he drops too much you know what to do with karo, etc.

 

So we added a teaspoon of pumpkin into Victor's food this morning and I went in to sleep for a while since my sleep schedule has been pretty messed up lately. My mom can't remember exactly how long after he'd eaten his food that it happened but she noticed that in his litter box he'd either thrown up the pumpkin/food or he'd had a pretty loose bowel movement, she couldn't tell which. I just want to get your guys' input about this and whether or not we should continue to add the pumpkin in his food.

Also, another thing I've been wondering about for a while, since insulin needs food to work off of, what should we do if he ever throws up after we've already given him his shot?

 

@H.M. Victor

Sorry Victor had a bad experience after eating the pumpkin. Was it added to the food he has already been eating or was the food new to him as well? Bama sometimes runs and gets into the litter box when he's looking for a place to throw up but he never actually stays there. He gets out, throws up in a spot, moves a couple feet and throws up more. Sorry for the graphic detail. Just trying to give some perspective. He has had some diarrhea in his litterbox that made me wonder if it was BM or puke. Left it uncovered for me. Maybe he thought I'd miss seeing it if he covered it.

Anyway, you could leave off the pumpkin for a couple days to see if the GI issues continue. Could be he was going to have an issue without the pumpkin or could be due to the pumpkin. Hard to say. If you want to try again in a few days, just add a quarter teaspoon. Is he still taking Laxatone?

If Victor throws up soon after getting his shot, you'll want to monitor his BG until his nadir passes and be prepared to intervene with syrup, gravy food and the like if he gets much below 100. If it's a hairball, sometimes the cat will be hungry again in a few minutes and you can feed him more of his regular food.

 

It was added to the same food he's been eating.

We are still giving him the Laxatone, but there have been several days that we've forgotten, since we've changed when we give it to him (we used to give it to him right before his dinner), so I'm sure the fact that we've been unintentionally inconsistent with it is most likely a factor in the constipation he's been having.

We did hold off on the pumpkin in his food this morning and he's been okay so far. We will probably go ahead and try just the quarter teaspoon in a day or two.

How often should we check his BG?

Thanks so much for responding

 

When a puking episode follows his shot and it looks like his entire [or most of it] meal has been ejected, I would take an immediate BG reading then see if he is interested in eating again. Then take additional readings every hour or two depending on how low his BG is. Bama's hairball episodes usually occurr after nadir and a couple hours prior to his preshot so I don't usually even take a reading. I just watch him a little closer.

I have never used Laxatone. Based on this info about it at PetCareRx, it contains corn syrup, malt syrup and cane molasses--sugar--in other words. I would not give it along side the pumpkin and would probably stop using it altogether.

 

@Kris & Teasel @JanetNJ Sorry to keep bothering you guys with questions about this, but I need help with one other thing regarding the wet food. Since we only get a fixed monthly income and can only buy necessities on a month-by-month basis, we need to figure out how many cans of food we'll need to buy a month. I tried taking a crack at figuring it myself by multiplying on a calculator the number of cans we'd feed him daily by how many days there are next month (which I don't know if that's the correct way to figure that out, but like I said, I'm terrible at math), which came to 75. Would that be right or am I doing it completely wrong?

Also, one other question about lancet usage: since Victor makes the BG testing so difficult sometimes, it's pretty common that I have to prick him more than once, and I wanted to know if I can use the same lancet for more than one poke or should a new one be used each time?

 

That is the correct way to figure out how many cans to get. If you plan to feed 2.5 cans a day for 30 days, that is 75 cans.

The lancets start out sterile and are not once you use them, but it should be fine to use the same lancet to poke him a couple/few times when you are testing. You could even wipe the needle part with alcohol between pokes if you are worried about it. The needle probably dulls some with each poke, too. So, you would not want to use it too many times, but just two or three times while trying to get blood for a single test should be just fine.

Are you heating up the ear before you poke? That really makes a big difference and could keep you from having to poke so much.

 

I routinely use a lancet needle twice and I wipe it with alcohol in between. I think that could be stretched to three times.

Re number of cans: Fancy Feast is in 3 oz cans so it makes sense that Victor would need 2+ cans a day. If you decide to try Friskies 5.5 oz cans you could reduce the number of cans to 1.5 a day. My guess is Victor won't need more than that to achieve (slowly!) and maintain a healthy weight for his size. Friskies is cheaper as well. Fancy Feast might have the edge a bit in quality of ingredients but Friskies is perfectly acceptable. If your budget is very tight that might be something to think about.

 

I do heat his ear beforehand, the problem is that he tends to flick his ear or jerk his head away right as I'm about to put the strip to the blood drop, and if it was just a small prick/drop then I'm not always able get more blood from it, so I have to prick again. I could try milking his ear to bring up more blood, but he doesn't like it when I do that. I also try to hold his ear in place as I put the strip to it, but he still manages to flick the blood drop off with some regularity.

 

I have seen some people mention scooping up the blood drop on the top of their fingernail then testing it from there.

 

I roll a hand towel and put it around Teasel's neck right under his chin. It helps to keep his head still.