New member - learning the ropes

Hi, I'm Anne, Maddie's personal slave and couch

Maddie was recently diagnosed with diabetes after a bout of psychogenic alopecia which the vet treated with Feliway and a short course of steroids - she went downhill after the steroids, losing weight rapidly, which makes me wonder if they precipitated the diabetes?

Anyway, after a short stressful period while they ordered in the necessary supplies, my vet put her on 1 unit of Lantus BID and a diet of Purina ProPlan DM. Two weeks later and she's putting on weight and almost back to her old vocal, highly affectionate self - phew!

Yesterday Maddie went in for a glucose curve but was very stressed by the whole experience, so I'm going to be borrowing a glucose meter from the vet soon and take some measurements at home. On the plus side, my vet was also able to get hold of some ProZinc, so we started Maddie on that this morning.

I'd also like to transition Maddie to wet food, as she's been on dry kibble (Arden Grange) all her life. She took well to the Purina ProPlan kibble, preferring it to her old food, but when it comes to the pouches she changes her mind about them regularly. For a couple of days she seemed happy to have one pouch twice daily and a little kibble to make up the calories, but now she only wants to lick the gravy off

So, I'm trying to work out the best way to get her eating the wet food. Because she's still underweight, I don't really want to restrict her too much, so I'd appreciate any tips on getting an underweight cat to eat better!

 

WELCOME TO FDMB! We are so glad you found us and I am CONFIDENT we can get your Beautiful Maddie on the right track!
Theres a wealth of information here at your fingertips but whats even better is the combined knowledge and PRACTICAL experience this board contains. We are a family of kitty cat lovers all tied together by this disease called diabetes.
You MAY want to start here:
New? How You Can Help Us Help You!

I do have to tell you that the steroids are probably what put Maddie in this condition. BUT! WE CAN WORK WITH THAT!
In fact thats how My Troubles fell into this disease.
I'm not a dosing helper. Troubled passed away at 14 BUT there are plenty here who are. They will be guiding you.

Again welcome to the best site on this planet to help you help that gorgeous Maddie get to be her old self once again.
WELCOME Lap warmer Maddie and Slave Anne. welcome to our family
jeanne

 

Also that dry food (which is packed with carbs) is probably whats keeping Maddie from regulation territory. Trouble was a kitty crack addict as well. One IMPORTANT thing is NEVER make a food change suddenly. The amount of carbohydrates in any given food can GREATLY impact BG numbers. I removed Troubles dry food and his NUMBERS dropped 100 points. THAT can happen to any cat.

You are going to learn a LOT about food and how it works with diabetes.

 

Hi Anne and Maddie, welcome to FDMB! I see you’re in Cambridge. We have several other newbies in the UK so I’ll tag a few here in case they’d like to chip in with their experiences:

@Douglas_my ginger cat
@KyraCat
@Hercule's mum
@Gill & Mac (UK)
@Gavin

Meanwhile to answer your specific question about transitioning to wet food (yes definitely the best thing you can do) - you could try sprinkling a little Parmesan cheese on top of the wet food, or a few flakes of tuna - something strong-smelling that she’ll be attracted to. Or try some different-flavoured pouches - the varieties in jelly are lower in carbs than the ones in gravy, which contain ‘various sugars’. It may be a trial and error situation until you find something she likes - we all know now finicky cats are

One thing to bear in mind though when you’re transitioning from dry to wet - do so gradually and be aware that wet food has a much lower carb content than dry, so may well lower bg on its own (ie irrespective of insulin). So really, the sooner you can get hold of a meter and start testing the better.

Have you read the UK doc that contains all sorts of useful info? I’ll link it here:

https://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB...-vit-b12-and-other-need-to-know-stuff.137376/

 

Welcome Anne and Maddie!

you’re my kind of people. I live to serve my babies too ha!

please make sure you’re home testing if your going to transition from dry to wet. As JT mentioned it can drop the BG numbers by a lot. Can I ask why you’re switching from Lantus to prozync? I happen to really like Lantus. Just curious.

weclome again!

 

Thanks! I have read the UK document - though it's a lot to take in! I've tried parmesan, which sometimes works, sometimes not. The wet food I'm giving her is mostly Purina ProPlan DM (0.5% total sugars), or occasionally Blink (1.5% carbs) - either way she prefers the gravy/jelly to the meat some days!

 

It often does take a while for a cat to recognise wet food as “food” if they’ve been used to dry all their life, but it can be done. Perseverance and patience are probably needed! You could try some other brands - Sainsbury’s Delicious is good and is available in single pouches and boxes of six, I think.

 

Try crumbling a bit of dry over the top of the canned food?

 

Thanks! I'm switching because at my vet's prices, ProZinc works out at about a third the cost! I don't know what the price would be if buying online with a vet's prescription, but since ProZinc has been in very short supply here, I haven't really been in a position to make the comparison.

 

Hello! It really is such a lot to take in, I'm still trying!! haha

My 3 did the same to start with, licked most of the jelly off of the food, but during the day they would return to the bowls and actually eat. This was when we were on Whiskas only. We're slowly changing over to Feringa and though there is a bit of jelly it is not in the same quantity as with Whiskas. Is Maddie returning later on to eat the food or once all the jelly has gone is that it until the next course of jelly is served?

Maddie is beautiful!! We also have a Maddie, but she goes by Maddiepie or Magpie - she is mad and in to everything!!

 

Sometimes she returns later, sometimes not - it's infuriatingly inconsistent!

I'm thinking I need to take away all food tonight so that she's hungry by morning, and then feed her the wet food a few pieces at a time so she can't fill up on the gravy/jelly. Maybe she just needs to get used to the texture.

 

You might want to look into a timed feeder. That way you can time when she gets food in the middle of the night. If you remove her food at night shes BOUND to let you know shes Hangry.

 

If you don't mind my asking, what's the ballpark £££ for Lantus direct from the vet? Is it a 10ml vial or a 3ml pen cartridge? I ask out of curiosity because it has been a while since I last purchased Lantus.


Mogs
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Hi Anne,
Prozinc and lantus are actually a similar price at the moment (for a 10ml vial) if you're buying with a prescription from your vet. Average lantus price is around £45 from a human pharmacy. And Prozinc is currently available online at Weldrick's for £45.30, but there will also be postage to pay on that. Buying 5 x lantus pens is a little more money upfront but ultimately cheaper (someone paid £53 from Tesco pharmacy recently) because they last a long time.
If you have experience of both insulins now then you may well be in a position to know which one works best for 'your' kitty; and if you are able to choose then that puts you in a very privileged position.

Eliz

 

Some ideas:

Persuading your cat to eat


Mogs
.

 

Eliz, what's the ballpark going rate for Lantus direct from a vet? Our vet used to sell single 3ml pen cartridges and I can't recall how much they charged for them. A 10ml vial of Lantus from a local pharmacy was £50 (plus the vet's fee for the written Rx).


Mogs
.

 

That's very good!

Sorry to harp on about the FTA thang, but I really do worry about medicine prices if one were to go ahead...


Mogs
.

 

£124 for a 10ml vial. Of course that might just be Cambridge prices!

 

It's too early to say if ProZinc suits her better, since we only started this morning. Once the ProZinc supply chain is back to normal, I'll definitely look into buying it online, as it will be a lot cheaper than the vet. They've been very supportive though about home testing, since she was very stressed by her all-day stay for a glucose curve, so I'm keen to stay on good terms with them!

 

Just gave her one teaspoon of wet food - she licked the gravy off and walked away

I think I'll remove all food at bedtime and start again in the morning with 30g dry food twice a day (based on vet's recommended intake). Once I'm sure she's getting enough calories, I'll revisit the wet food, though I'll need a new strategy, I think!

 

Regarding switching to lower carb DO please get comfortable with hometesting before you do that. As others have said, the blood glucose can drop a lot, and the insulin dose may need to be reduced also so as to avoid hypo...

I do understand that it can be a challenge to convert dry food addicted kitties to wet food. I went through this last year with my adopted diabetic girl, Bonbon. She was 12 years old and had never eaten wet food.
So, she was on a dry diet and 4 units Caninsulin BID when she came here last Feb. After transitioning her to wet food her insulin requirement immediately dropped by half. I changed her insulin, and she went into remission last October.

When I adopted her I was told that she would never ever eat wet food, that the people at the rescue had tried that with her, and she refused to eat it. So, I was prepared for a bit of a battle when she came here. However, to my astonishment, she was on wet food within 5 days...

Because I didn't want to give insulin without testing her blood glucose, and because she was otherwise healthy, I elected to take her off insulin for maybe a week or two while getting her used to being hometested, and while trying to persuade her to eat wet food... (I also monitored her pee for ketones which is always a good idea in newly diagnosed cats, and those in high blood glucose levels, and whenever removing or significantly reducing an insulin dose).

Food-wise, the first thing I did was I swap her high carb veterinary diet for a lower carb (and better quality) dry food, Thrive 'premium plus' chicken.
Then I tried various things to get her to try wet food...
I bought a whole load of foods in different flavours and textures to see which, if any, she showed interest in. (My other cats were really grateful for the many foods that she just turned her nose up at... )
And I tried things like; putting tiny bits of wet food in among the dry food; crushing dry food and sprinkling that onto a small amount of wet food; putting crushed treats (various flavours) on top of wet food; putting Fortiflora on wet food; leaving wet food out at night so she could graze on that if she got really hungry; trying her with wet food first thing in the morning when she was at her hungriest; I also tried putting tuna on wet food, only to find that she had no interest in tuna whatsoever... But she did really like plain cooked white fish, though fish of any kind should only be fed in moderation...

She showed 'some' interest in the shredded chicken type cat foods (Thrive, etc) so I focused my attention there. She didn't like the texture though, and didn't like the feel of it in her mouth, so I chopped it up more and spread it out on a plate in such a way that it was easier for her to pick the pieces up.

By day 4 she was eating half dry food and half wet food, so I thought that the next day I'd just try all wet and see what happened. And she was fine!
So by day 5 she only had the wet cat food. She still didn't like the texture and wanted it chopping up. And over the next days I gave small snacks of cooked white fish because I knew she really liked that, and it might help her to get used to the feeling of wet food in her mouth, which is probably very different to just swallowing kibble...
I think there's no doubt that she'd 'prefer' her dry food, just like I'd prefer to eat cakes and chocolate. But, those aren't the healthiest options, hehe!

Eliz

 

God's holy trousers!!!! (Excuse me while I pick my jaw up off the floor...)


Mogs
.

 

I don't know, Mogs... I've only heard people say "expensive", haha! And everyone I know who uses Lantus gets it from a human pharmacy...

 

Hahahaaaaaa!!!

 

The frustrating thing is that for a couple of days she seemed quite happy with the wet food, then she turned her nose up at it. She will also eat plain steamed chicken pieces (the cheap sort from Tesco/Sainsburys), so it's not because she doesn't like the feel of wet food per se. Maybe it's just the texture of the Purina chunks she doesn't like.

 

God wears trousers?

 

Yeah, she finds them really practical.


.

 

Very possibly...
Or it may be that, as with Bonbon, your kitty doesn't really recognise some wet cat foods as 'foods' at all... I do actually wonder if Bonbon was OK with the shredded chicken cat foods just because they are very similar to human foods, and that maybe someone had at some time or other given her a little bit of chicken, and indeed a bit of white fish (maybe some they'd brought back from the chippy!)

 

Hi Anne - if you have pet insurance you may find they will cover the cost of the meter. I bought an animal one anyway and then had a pleasant surprise when my insurance said they would reimburse me. So its definitely worth a check
I have noticed a few posts on here on people using human monitors but not sure how the numbers equate on thatbas I only know the cat numbers to panic at !
Best of luck to you & Maddie!

 

Hi Anne - if you have pet insurance you may find they will cover the cost of the meter. I bought an animal one anyway and then had a pleasant surprise when my insurance said they would reimburse me. So its definitely worth a check
I have noticed a few posts on here on people using human monitors but not sure how the numbers equate on thatbas I only know the cat numbers to panic at !
Best of luck to you & Maddie!

 

This site was built around using human meters. Just an FYI

 

Hi Anne & Maddie! Welcome!

A little late to the party but can see that there has been a lot of helpful information already.

Douglas was never a picky eater but recently he has turned his attention more to the dry, which (un)lucky for me I know need to phase out following a glucose curve.

My plan is to slowly phase this out over the next 6 days for example, he's on 2 sachets wet Royal Canin Diabetic and 40g dry. Tomorrow, I will change to 2.4 sachets wet and 20g dry for a couple of days then 3 sachets wet and 10g dry until the dry is phased out. Please note that I also home testing with an Alphatrak2

I can keep you updated on how the progress is and I would be keen to hear how you are getting on.

Finally, can I just say thank you @Diana&Tom for my first tag! It feels great to contribute to other newbies here

 

You’re very welcome, Anna! Most people here are in the US so I think it’s important for others to feel part of the community, to stick together and swap notes on supplies, etc. And reading other people’s threads can be very helpful - you pick up all sorts of things and start to bond with certain people, and you begin to recognise names and learn who can answer what kind of questions, etc. Treating FD is quite an intense experience and lasting friendships can be made here - I’m in frequent touch off the board with about five people in different parts of the world who I’ve “met” over the years, as well as having a firm friendship with Elizabeth (&Bertie) - we joined the original FDMB at the same time back in 2007, found we lived near each other, and meet up when we can... just a bit of background! Basically, the more you stick around here and participate, the more you get out of it, which has to be good news for you, your kitty, and everyone else you come across