Complete Care for Your Aging Cat - Amy Shojai [98]
How much your cat eats or exercises influences glucose levels. Maintaining a regular routine is important.
Too much insulin or too little can have devastating consequences. Diabetic coma may result if the cat gets the wrong amount of insulin. the insulin is too old, if she doesn’t eat on schedule, or over-exercises. The cat loses consciousness, and can’t be awakened. This is a life-threatening emergency that requires immediate veterinary help.
Too much insulin causes hypoglycemia—an insulin reaction. The cat acts disoriented or drunk, drools, shakes, acts weak and may develop a head tilt. Giving her a glucose source such as honey or Karo syrup should reverse these signs in five to 15 minutes. Without intervention, the condition progresses to convulsions, coma and death.
Treatment
Diabetic cats don’t tend to have the same severe complications as diabetic people, says Dr. Nelson. A rigid control of the human disease is required because people live for decades and complications tend to develop twenty or more years after diagnosis. Of course, cats don’t live that long. The goal is to keep cats happy, active and interactive with the owners. “It’s a quality of life issue,” says Dr. Nelson.
In the last few years researchers have begun taking a closer look at the practice of feeding cats complete and balanced commercial diets that are largely carbohydrate-source ingredients. “Dietary feeding practices in the cat are kind of mirrored after the dog, and in the dog they’ve been mirrored after a person. But a cat is a pure carnivore, and the dog is an omnivore just like a person,” says Dr. Nelson. “One of the theories is that we would be better off feeding cats a real high-protein, low-carbohydrate type of a diet rather than the more standard omnivore diet that dogs tend to get. DM diet by Purina goes after that approach.”
DM-Formula (diabetes management formula), a Purina Veterinary Diet, comes in dry or canned forms and combines extremely high protein with low carbohydrates. A percentage of type 2 diabetic cats may be able to live normal lives without insulin injections when fed this or a similar diet. “Cats fed the high protein/low carbohydrate diets are ten times more likely to lose their dependency on insulin injections,” says Dr. Center.
Deborah S. Greco, DVM, PhD says the best approach is dietary change alongside other medical management, be that oral agents or insulin injections. A low carbohydrate, high protein diet can be therapeutic products designed for treatment of diabetes, or over the counter canned food diets (such as Fancy Feast). Dry forms of diabetic diets may be meal fed, but not free choice. Choose the lowest carbohydrate content based on a dry matter basis.
Feeding For Health
A high fiber diet not only helps reduce overweight but also helps regulate the rate at which food is digested and glucose released into the cat’s system. Other therapeutic diets increase the protein and reduce the carbohydrates. A number of diets may be appropriate, including:
Eukanuba Adult Weight Control Formula
Iams Veterinary Diets, Nutritional Weight Loss Formulas, Restricted-Calorie/Feline
Max Cat Lite
IVD (Royal Canin) Select Care Feline HiFactor Formula
IVD (Royal Canin) Select Care Feline Mature Formula
IVD (Royal Canin) Select Care Feline Weight Formula
Nutro Complete Care Weight Management
Precise Feline Light Formula
Purina Veterinary Diets, DM Diabetes Management Formula
Waltham Feline Calorie Control Diet
When the diabetic cat is fat, losing weight is an important part of treatment. “If you can correct that, a lot of times the diabetes will go away,” says Rhonda L. Schulman, DVM, an internist at University of Illinois. A weight-loss diet combined with veterinary supervision and exercise—encouraging the cat to play—is most effective. She says