After our cat Jadin lost a disturbing amount of weight, we took him to the vet and he was diagnosed with diabetes. The vet prescribed insulin and special diabetic-diet cat food. Jadin is supposed to recieve insulin injections every twelve hours and be fed immediately after.
But a problem arose: he lost his appetite and wouldn’t eat the prescribed food; and giving him insulin on an empty stomach would probably kill him. After trying to find food he’ll eat, my wife is currently feeding him organ meat from the butcher’s- heart, kidney, liver, etc.- supplemented with muscle meat, bone meal and cat vitamins. Her reasoning is that organs are pretty much what cats eat in the wild anyway, and one would suppose protein and fat are less likely to spike blood sugar than commercial cat food filled with rice.
So, is this reasoning sound or is this not a balanced diet for a cat? (His blood sugar is down, though not far enough yet.)
Even though its not much, organ meat has some carbohydrate.
A cat’s diet in the wild is irrelevent, since a diabetic cat would die very soon in the wild. According to this site, a diabetic cat doesn’t have the same sort of problems that human or other mammals with diabetes have.
It has several links to othe feline diabetes help sites.
Good Luck.
The site picunurse posted is really a wealth of info for owners of diabetic cats. I relied on it heavily before my 15-yr old sugarkitty died this past summer.
You can easily gobble up all the info there, plus the message board, and related websites posted in their links page. But here’s one feedback if people’s experiences are all you’re hoping for today: my kitty was more easily regulated (ie I didn’t have to worry about huge spikes or dangerous lows as much) when he was fed a mostly protein & fat diet. So what you have Jadin on sounds like a good diet, esp. if that’s all he’ll eat.
It was also more important to keep him on a pretty regular routine (i.e. give him his shot and his meal not more than 11 or 13 hours from the previous meal & shot.
Oh, and getting a blood glucose test kit & learning to use it is the best piece of advice.