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Old May 20th, 2010, 10:53 AM
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rjesak rjesak is offline
Wayward Family Cats Mommy
 
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: F'burg, VA, USA
Posts: 317
Diet for diabetic cat

This post may not end up mattering much since my mother has chosen not to take my advice with her cats up until now but, under the circumstances, it's worth another try.

She took her cat Jessie (14) to the vet Saturday. He'd been throwing up for two or three days and had lost an enormous amount of weight (he's at 11 pounds down from 25 a few months ago - yes, he is/was extremely overweight).

The vet diagnosed him with a liver infection and diabetes (I don't have a copy of the bloodwork, unfortunately). She said that he'd also lost a ton of muscle tissue. She prescribed a couple of meds to calm his stomach (which worked nearly immediately - he was OBVIOUSLY feeliing much, MUCH better within a couple of hours) and an antibiotic.

The vet put him on insulin so mom will be giving him shots twice daily. She (the vet) also recommended that she (mom) change his feeding to twice a day (she's (mom again) in the habit of leaving food for him 24 hours a day).

Now, when I say she hasn't heeded my advice up until now, I say this because she is currently feeding him Purina Indoor Cat dry food (left down all day) and a half can of Friskies canned food twice a day. She's been quite stubborn about my attempts to get her to switch them over to a canned-food diet. Since Jesse likes dry food, she hasn't been willing to force him to make the switch.

Now that he's been diagnosed with diabetes, I'm thinking diet is more important than ever. The vet told her to put him on "any senior cat food" but (and don't get me wrong, I totally my vet), she was very, very resistant to me putting Oscar on anything but Science Diet so she's not a feline dietician.

The thing is, I don't know what proper feeding for a diebetic cat is. I know it should be high fiber and low protein and I imagine that it would still be a really good idea to get him off kibble but I'm not sure what the result of that analysis is though.

Any thoughts on what food would be good? I also could seriously use some arguing material - I know why canned food beats dry food generally but any specifics regarding diabetes?
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