Hi littermates. As you may or may not recall, one of my two surviving cats, Frisky, is diabetic just like his late sister/littermate Alice was. (She died of pancreatice/intestinal lymphoma 5 months ago.)
Anyway, his blood glucose levels have always been hard to control and had been getting higher and higher and on a roller coaster in recent months. He has always preferred dry food and it has been almost impossible to get him to eat canned food.
Well, he ended up with severe chronic constipation several weeks ago, needing a couple of enemas to get his insides cleared out and moving again (poor baby!) and is now on a course of Lactulose to soften his stools and help keep him regular.
In the process, he wasn’t eating at all for a few days and after the enemas was hungry as a horse. I took the opportunity to switch almost exclusively to canned food since he now also needs to have plain pumpkin mixed into his food to help against constipation. Wow, the change in his blood glucose levels is dramatic!!! He’s gone from averaging between 360-470 on the dry food down to about 160 with no insulin and as low 46 with minimal insulin. (Had to get food and honey into him when it went that low.) I’m keeping a close, close check on his BG 2x day but it may be that he may get off insulin!
So, if any of you have a cat that is diabetic or at risk of becoming so due to weight issues, when your vet tells you that a canned food diet with no grains (including gravy) is better for controlling diabetes, I’m finding that is definitely so.
That said, I know some cats simply won’t eat canned food. Frisky has been one of those. But, to my surprise, he actually seems to like having the small dab of plain pumpkin mixed into canned food. I still sprinkle about a dozen dry kibbles on top to get him interested if he wants to be too finicky and ignore the canned food.
The battle over what our cats will eat is never an easy fight to win. But I hope that my current experience with changing Frisky’s diet and it’s benefits might perhaps help one or more of you.
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