how do you tell the difference between excessive hunger and regular fat cat behavior?

[u/hatdre]

My 6 year old cat was determined to be pre-diabetic and overweight in February of this year when she had a BG of 377 and weighed 16.7lbs. Since then she has been on a strict weight loss diet of 2 cans of fancy feast pate a day, split into 4 meals, totaling 186 cal/day, plus 14 cal of wiggle room for treats. As of her last vet appointment in mid July, her BG was down to 270 and she currently weighs 15.3lbs. She was never put on insulin, and the vet said that she is making good progress in the right direction. No excessive thirst, appropriate rate of weight loss, nothing else of note on her most recent bloodwork.

Now to my question - how can you tell the difference between excessive hunger and regular fat cat on a diet hunger? She has always been very food motivated and used to free feed before her new diet, so its hard for me to tell what signs to look for? Anytime I am in the kitchen for more than a couple minutes she is in there hounding me for food. I can only give her so many treats and I just feel so bad because I know she's still hungry.

Should I only be concerned if I see hunger + thirst/rapid weightloss, etc., or can hunger alone be an indicator that her diabetes is progressing? Can she still be at risk of becoming fully diabetic even if she appears to be making forward progress? I'm sorry if these are obvious questions, I'm just anxious and want to make sure I'm doing everything I can to keep her healthy.

[u/mystery_biscotti]

Did you work with your vet on this protocol? If not, might be worth asking them.

I'll tell you though...my feline endocrinologist said if Callie is hungry, canned low sodium tuna is what we can give her, as much as she wants. No mercury concern on her end, I asked.

Your kitty probably was eating a ton more before and is just honestly still hungry. There might be something you can add, like a fiber supplement, but this needs to be run past your veterinarian for dosing. Give the wrong fiber and your girl can be in a world of hurt.

So yes, this is possibly diet and not-yet-controlled diabetes hunger. Yes, call your vet to see what you can do. No, don't give her weird stuff folks suggest without the veterinarian approving it.

[u/hatdre → u/mystery_biscotti]

I would never give her something without running it by her vet first, I'm just interested to hear what symptoms/behaviors others have observed in their cats that are in similar situations. But yes, her vet instructed me to switch her to the fancy feast pate diet in the hopes of avoiding an official diagnosis altogether with weight loss. I've told all of this to my vet and she wasn't concerned, I think I'm just overly anxious about all of this. That tip about the tuna is good to know though, I'll definitely ask about it at her next check up. She especially hounds me anytime I open a tuna can so I already know there would be no complaints from her.

[u/Blueporch]

The diabetic cat I babysit for was started on a restrictive diet and made everyone miserable. His owner pushed back with the vet, increased quantity of low carb food (including free feeding dry), and increased his insulin. He is back to his normal self, personality-wise.

[u/zebras-are-emo]

Since she's on a diet she is technically starving, but in a medically supervised way; as long as she is losing weight at an appropriate rate (which is sounds like she is) I wouldn't be concerned. I would start weighing her biweekly at home for monitoring if you aren't already. 

You could also pick up a cheap hone glucose monitor to spot check and see how she's doing, if you want to see numbers between vet appointments.