10-31 Cami had a green PS tonight!

Her numbers have been beautiful and I am so happy that this, at least, is going well for her. Tonight she was 91 at PS so I reduce a tad from .25u to .2u and will try and get a +6 tonight (that I have to wake up for - which I am so not looking forward to).

I have yet to catch her below upper 80s, but I bet she has been there - like maybe today. I was gone all day so not spot checks - plus I am low on strips and don't expect the order to arrive until Friday. Plus2 - she is not a fan of testing and I feel somewhat like I have a small cyclone in my hands. It's a good thing she isn't bigger or stronger or I would not be able to manage her without burrito-ing her.

She is still quite fussy (growls, hisses, cries for food, etc.) most of the time. I was able to get her on my lap for about 5 mins of purring and gentle (barely touching her) combing. She is very sweet when she decides to be. It just doesn't happen very often.

She stole Beau's tuna treats tonight when my back was turned and I have caught her approaching him when he is eating and growling at him to make him leave his dish. I have to referee meal times or she will grab a dish as soon as it is vacated. I wonder how much food is useful to her? I am trying to limit her to 12=15 ozs because I don't think she can process more than that and get the nutrients from it, but maybe I am wrong.

Does anyone know of any articles about how to best put weight on them without making them sick from over eating?

 

What beautiful numbers! Cami is doing wonderfully. She is one lucky girl.
I don't have any words of wisdom on getting her to gain weight....Missy needs to do the opposite. I have to referee dishes between my two, though. Partially so I can keep a handle on who ate what, but also because Phoenix seems to use feeding time as a time to exert dominance. He will leave his dish with food in it and push Missy out of the way while she is at her dish. I feed them apart, one in the dining room and one in the kitchen and stand guard until they are both done. Not my favorite thing to have to do, but the only way I can keep a handle on who ate what.
Hopefully yours will work things out, soon.

 

Go Cami Go!

Wow, she's doing great (and u too Sheila)

WHen Dante came, I let him be a piggy-wiggy for as long as it took. Now he hardly eats anything and looks like a totally different cat. I figured withholding food would just add to the stress, yes??

I wonder if you can add some sort of fiber to make her feel fuller w/out it messing her up??

Hey- at least your kitties are in the same room together :YMSIGH:

 

I know with Autumn I let her eat as much as she could stuff into her face when she first got here. Those first few months she was chowing down a full 5.5 oz can 4 times a day. Once she started leaving food in her bowl I cut her back to half a can at each meal and finally we got to where we are today at a fourth of a can.

Autumn was highly food aggressive too, what I did was feed her in her kennel first with the door shut then later with it open, and then slowly started moving her dish closer and closer to where everyone else eats. Not so much so I made sure she got enough to eat but so that they could eat in peace. As she would literally fly across the room and charge the other cats off all of the dishes. :shock: I still have a couple of cats that will not eat next to her from the drama of those early days, even though she now waits patiencely for her dish to be set down and eats calmly next to everyone. (still won't share a dish but that is no big deal). I just tried to make sure that any interaction with the other cats was pleasant for everyone so no one would get their whiskers bent out of shape.

Autumn has been with me longer than Cami has been with you and Autumn is still a work in progress...Cami will get there too. I think the hardest thing for me to remember when Autumn got here was that she had literally a lifetime to unlearn and relearn in a loving enviroment. Both Maxwell and Musette had been pets and lived with other cats...(Maxwell in a sanctuary setting and Musette being bullied by a dominate male) so they adapted fairly quickly to at least the animals, Musette just needed to learn about toys and lovins. Autumn on the other hand was a farm cat...she was a street smart girl where it was stick up for myself because no one else will. But she knew dogs and humans where good so that was where her affection was given, but she guarded even those resources with that iron paw. She is just now finally truly relaxing and allowing everyone to share her space and her people. Slowly I think she is finally realizing that there is plenty here for all. Cami has a lifetime to unlearn too, right now she is showing progress she is at least spending some time on your lap and coming to bed with you...that is further than we have made it with Autumn. Autumn still won't sleep with us, and she would rather lay next to you than on you. And if I pick her up to cuddle she is like holding a shotgun she is so stiff, however, unlike Cami she is a dream to test...All I do is shake the container of boiled chicken bites and she comes marching to jump up on the desk to be tested. But it took finding a treat that she would crawl over broken glass for, before that I was so grateful she was front declawed because I wasn't getting shredded which I'm sure she would have loved to do in the beginning.

Mel, Maxwell, Autumn & The Fur Gang

 

Thanks Mel and Sheri, for letting me know how things went with Autumn and Dante in the beginning. I guess I need to feed her more. I was thinking that 20+ ozs of food was way too much for her, but maybe that is what it takes so she doesn't feel like there won't be enough.

I had also thought about bringing the dog kennel up from the car (instead of putting it in storage for the winter) in order to feed her in it. I shut her in the bedroom at first, but that just made her really mad about things and she peed on the rug and sofa in there. Right now I feed her in the kitchen and the others in whatever room they are in - this was just after I got them all used to eating back in the kitchen after Jeddie was gone and I had three feeding stations - two outside the kitchen. Sigh.... oh well.

My other cats have been free fed and they are not quite getting that they need to eat when I place the bowl in front of them or it will be gone until the next time. I don't worry about the two sisters, but I do worry about Beau with his hyperT and diet controlled FD - don't want to either not feed enough or feed too big a meal that his pancreas can't manage it.

Well, I overslept the +6 last night by two hours - she was 88, but probably went lower before because she was 171 this morning....still, that is pretty darn good for less than 3 weeks on insulin after months and months untreated.

 

Sheila,

Cami is doing amazing for only 3 months! I think both her and Autumn have a lot of parallels because they went so long without any kind of treatment, so they got into a habit of eating and eating and never not feeling hungry. I know it just seemed with Autumn unlike either Maxwell or Musette that she had to learn that food would fill her up and not just be a motion she went through. For the longest time I thought Autumn was a bottomless pit. I would look at her and wonder how could such a small cat eat so much, then she started to fill out again and I realized she wasn't meant to be a small cat. She was meant to be a big girl, she has a lot of Maine Coon hiding in those genetics somewhere and looking at Cami's before pictures I would say she should be about on par with my Onyx who in his hayday was a lean 14lbs. Cami looks like she has a lot of persian in her, or perhaps Angora neither of which are small breeds. They aren't terribly large in body size (height and lenght) but they are broad stocky breeds, if my guess is right then Cami is probably going to be a stocky well built girl when she gets back to her prime again, so she may, like Autumn and have lost a lot more weight than you think.

I know when I had Autumn at the vet's when I first got her and she wasn't even 6lbs I thought my vet was crazy when he said he wanted to see her weigh around 14 - 16lbs! I was figuring he would tell me about 10lbs max...but the more she blossoms the more I see how right he was. It may also be the same with Cami, she has a lot more weight to put back on and now that she feels good again with the lower bloodsugar she is making up for lost time. Or it is just that she is so scared that this constant supply of food will disappear again, that she is going to eat what she can get while she can get it.

If your kids are use to being free fed, just let them go back to that...although until Cami slows down you maybe filling the bowls an aweful lot... :lol: Now with 15 cats here I would never do anything but fill food dishes if I free fed, but you have a much smaller herd to feed. And who knows maybe Cami will slow down if she sees bowls that are always full.

Mel, Maxwell, Autumn & The Fur Gang

 

Sorry, Sheila, I don't know the answer to that one. Sneakers was just plain acro so hungry all the time until it simmered down and her numbers got better.

I hope you find the good measure to go by soon

 

Mel, hope you meant to say "3 weeks", cause it will be 3 weeks on Sat.

I also think she has some Persian in her with the short nose/snout and ever so slightly pushed in face. She was sure fluffy in that "tub" photo.

I got her vet records from the declaw surgery and it made me see red in all kinds of ways. For starters, just 15 months ago she weighed 13 lbs, 9 ozs. So she lost very nearly half her weight. I was told she was "chubby" so they fed weight loss dry food. Yeah, that stuff works :roll: . Once it pushes them over into diabetes, that is, and they drop weight like there's no tomorrow. She is so tiny now, I can't see her bigger than 10 lbs either, but we will see. She doesn't seem any taller/longer than Leanne, who is about 9.5 lbs. She does have a slight "Bull Dog" stance, with wide spread front legs, so maybe that indicates that stocky build you were talking about.

She has been quieter this afternoon after I started putting 1-1/2 "scoops" of food in her dish instead of 1. I use a 1/3 measuring cup, so I guess I am giving her a 1/2 cup, right? That's about 2.5:1 canned food to water. I am really afraid to free feed them all and keep filling up dishes. I'm afraid she will make herself sick and not know when to stop.

I just came home from running some errands and she greeted me with growls and hisses and running in front of me to the kitchen, so I bent down and patted her head (growl, hiss, growl) and said, "I'm glad to see you too, Cami!"

 

Maybe the growls and hisses are her way of saying hi and welcome back? She probably hasn't had that much lov'n for a while so she has to learn- like Autumn.

Glad she is happy to see you. I know she will take all she can get on the food :lol: .

 

Well, we are paying for the unlimited buffet with higher numbers. She was 187 at PS tonight. That's the highest she has been in a while. Plus, her sides are sticking out and I am not sure she is very comfortable. Looking at her makes me feel like I just finished a Thanksgiving dinner and ate too much.

She has probably had 10 ozs of food since 6 pm.

ETA: she is leaving some food in her dish - and looks really uncomfortable. Poor baby. I hope she will be ok.

 

The one thing I had to learn recently was how to gauge my meals and calories when I have gone from my supplements to actual food. Sometimes i was uncomfortable because I ate too much. So I learned not to eat so much

I am sure Cami will, too. They can sometimes get cause and effect if it immediate- poke the mouse- it squeaks and runs!

I hope she learns she has enough and can leave food for later and it will be there.

 

Friday am PS not so bad: 135, but I upped her dose 20% (from .25 to .3u) to help with the extra food while she sorts things out.

And now I have to go buy MORE cat food! It would be easier if she would just eat my money directly :roll: - but she would have to be able to take my ATM card.... :lol:

 

She'll get it...Autumn did, okay so we had a couple scarf and barf sessions but she eventually figured it out that food would always arrive at set times for us here and that she would never be hungry. But I know what you mean I was thinking they should have given me stock in Friskies at the rate we were going through it those first few weeks. At least because of her the Tractor Supply where we get our litter and catfood at started giving me 5% discount on all cat products... :lol: :lol: :lol:

Mel, Maxwell, Autumn & The Fur Gang

 

Hi Sheila
I heard you have a new baby!
Congrats! I am very happy for you, and I am sure you will have Cami OTJ soon! (antijinx!)
Hope all is well with you and your family!
Denise and Shakes

 

Thanks, Denise.

Actually, she is hitting some higher PS - in the 200s now. I have been busy with family in town and her shots have been late. I didn't want to increase the dose because tomorrow's am shot will have to be a little early. Besides, I need to get spot checks so I can figure out if she is high from eating more or from dropping low. Just got a new supply of strips and I think I can be back home by about +5 tomorrow.

Unfortunately, when my sister and I got home tonight someone had peed on the bathroom rug and someone (else?) had pooped on the living room rug. I am guess that Beau was the pee-er and Cami the pooper. Beau has never peed outside the box, but I think he peed on one of the beds up north last week. He gets anxious about walking past Cami to get to the LB because she sits in the hallway to the rooms were the LBs are and hisses at him if he tries to pass. Cami has pooped outside the LB twice when I had her shut up in the bedroom. I think she did it because she was mad. I was gone for a long time today - maybe 6 hrs, so maybe she was hungry and got mad. I just hope this isn't going to continue.

 

Well, she ate herself sick last night. And was still wanting more and more food this am. I'm testing in a few minutes, so I hope she isn't too high.

I think the way she was being fed before, 6 ozs twice a day, encouraged her to eat a BIG meal and feel really full, but then she was frantically hungry way before the next meal so she feels insecure that there will be food in the middle of day/night - plus the whole "starving from the inside thing"... sigh.

 

You are doing such a great job with her, big hugs!

Everything has to fall into place at some point, you will figure it out.

 

Whew! amPS was 111! Yay! And +6 was 104... so I am thinking she may be ready for another decrease, but I have to get more spot checks first.

She just cleaned out two additional bowls while I was checking my email. She has figured out where, and how to get to, all but one spot that I have been putting the others' bowls. Although this time I only put about half what I normal do into them. Hope she doesn't get sick again.

She was right at the door when I got home - and then turned and ran to the kitchen, and came back again when I didn't immediately follow, lol.