Dose advice for cat doesn’t eat. Please help.

Hi,

It broke my heart to find out yesterday that Sabrina stopped eating. Her appetite has been fluctuating probably because she has a fractured canine tooth (we saw a specialist last Wednesday though he is not opt for extraction). Even with the broken tooth Sabrina always ate and I managed to give her enough calories everyday. Unfortunately, she stopped eating last night, even her favorite freeze dried venison snack isn’t appealing enough. So I decided to offer her one of her old food — Fancy Feast elegant medleys shredded salmon (11% carb according to Dr. Lisa’s food chart). She licked the gravy and ate a tiny bit. In the meanwhile she is still alert and is willing to drink water. I syringe fed her 1/3 pouch of nulo mousse this morning after insulin.

Now I wonder about dose adjustment. I do plan to keep syringe feeding her but should I keep the same dose even if she doesn’t eat enough? If she does eat FF medleys MC, I plan to keep offering her until she’s willing to eat LC food, is it necessary to increase the dose accordingly?

She seems to become insulin resistant and had the worst numbers yesterday since DX. In the meanwhile she is still alert (though she sleeps a lot). No vomiting.

Another two things that might be relevant are
- Recently she started to dry gag at the smell of Tiny Taster/Weruva Jeopurddy/and some other food that contains lotus bean gum. She is never enthusiastic about those food but gaging is new.
- She had soft stools yesterday.

Any advices are very much appreciated.

 

Sorry you didn't get any help earlier. If your post starts to drop down the wall, it helps to make a comment on it which will bring it back to the top. The forum can move kind of fast sometimes!

Do you have any ketone test strips? Any time they stop eating and act unwell, it's best to test for ketones. Anything over "trace" is an emergency.

While we would like her to stick to low carb, if she's willing to eat some that's 11%, that's more important.

You don't want to skip the insulin, especially if she's starting to develop ketones. As long as you can syringe feed if necessary, I'd be sure she got her regular dose tonight.

 

Thank you Chris for the tips! I do have ketone test strips and check periodically.

I gave her regular dose last night and this morning as her BG is higher than before. She had bad diarrhea last night and we almost went to ER. Fortunately, she's getting better today.

 

I think you could increase her dose up to 1.5 too

We'd like to see her getting into greens for nadirs

 

Copy that! Thanks so much for the suggestion!

 

Why won't your vet extract the tooth? Canines are hunting teeth a cat can live without but a fractured tooth must be painful. See what preference Sabrina has for ice cold water vs. room temperature. Try the same thing with food. Also try heating the food a bit.
I'm not saying this is your next step but if it gets to be a matter of pain control, the tooth cannot come out and Sabrina hates oral meds transdermal BUPE is an option. The dosages are always at the top of my profile. It's too long of a story for here and not meant to be taken lightly. Good luck

 

Thank you so much for your advices! I didn't even know about transdermal buprenorphine

Both our primary vet and another local vet were "unwilling" to extract the tooth and referred us to specialist. After the consultation appointment, what we learned are (1) at the age of 16 Sabrina’s pulp might be already calcified which makes root canal treatment impossible, so extraction might be the only option if we decide to treat it; (2) after the nerves die, it would “take forever” (quote from the specialist) to develop abscess. He emphasized how long the root of canine tooth is and having it treated would not have huge impact on Sabrina’s appetite. Basically, he made us feel that it might not be worth it to put Sabrina through all the trauma..

 

Is her appetite back to normal?

 

Thank you for checking on Sabrina!! We are so lucky to have caring and knowledgeable fur ball lovers on this forum!

Sabrina’s appetite is back to normal and is more active today. We increased her dose to 1.5u yesterday and she had the most flat curve last night with all numbers below 200.

 

I am so glad to hear she is back to normal eating wise and activity wise..