Me and Sketch
A couple of months ago I noticed my cat Sketch was drinking more water and part of the litterbox was becoming bricked up with his urinary output. Took him to the vet and found out he has diabetes.
Sketch has always been a cat who loves his dry food, much preferring it to wet. Turns out the dry food I was feeding him was 33% carbs, far higher than the < 7% carbs my vet was recommending for Sketch. So I switched him to low carb canned food and saw improvement within a couple of days. After two weeks of this diet, plus insulin shots twice a day, Sketch’s blood glucose curve was good enough that he could go off insulin. After a few weeks of no insulin and normal blood glucose readings, he is officially in remission.
I feel like I spent $1200 to learn the hard way that the advice I’d heard for years — feed your cat low carb, grain free canned food — was true. So now I’m relaying this message to you, in hopes it will help other cats.
P.S. There’s a PDF document which shows the carb percentages of various cat foods.
I’m sorry about your vet bills, but glad that Sketch is doing ok. I’ve seen species-appropriate diets make a huge difference for a lot of cats.
When I adopted Molly, I had a hard time persuading her to switch to grain-free, low carb wet food. The compromise we reached, with her vet’s blessing, is that she eats her wet food and then she gets no more than a tablespoon of a high-protein, grain-free kibble as a treat. She’s usually content with that arrangement, and it’s made a big difference for her health.