The first positive event was that I managed to give Basti her first B12 shot without the vet present. The night before, I really felt the jitters of injecting her so to be on the safe side, I had emailed my vet (Malou) with the last few questions. Malou is such an angel! She was so sure that everything would work out, that I felt confident enough to actually do it. Although things didn't exactly go as planned (halfway through the injection Basti started squirming and for a split second I had my doubts) I got the full amount of 1 ml into her body without too much of a fight and no broken needles. For the next hour or so, she avoided me but after that, she responded normally again.
Yesterday afternoon, while visiting the vet clinic to pick up some more Prednoral for Basti, Malou told me she had been telling other customers about the box I built for Basti. That really meant the world to me. In addition, the people at ibdkitties.net had been responding to my messages on Facebook and due to those conversations, last night I decided to try and feed Basti wet food. And she ate a whopping 56 grams (2 oz)! Plus, there seem to be no adverse effects (read: no diarrhea).
This morning she weighed 3470 grams...20 grams more than the last time, Hallelujah! I'm crossing my fingers that this will continue and another possible relapse will be many months away...
In the mean time, I'm really disappointed in the homeopathic vet! Ten days after sending an email, I finally got a response at which point I figured that if he didn't care, neither did I. I also have been reading a Dutch article on the effects of kibble and high carbohydrate content in cat food. The article didn't just describe what happened, but also how it happened. The short version of the story is that unlike humans, a cat's liver cannot produce a particular enzyme called glucokinase to process large quantities of carbohydrates after a meal. This because carbs are not in their natural diet. They use a different enzyme to process smaller amounts during the day. This means that cats on kibble get fluctuating blood sugar levels when eating larges amounts of carbs. The suggestion that Basti would do well on diet kibble even higher in carbs than regular kibble, is nonsense. Basti has already proven that by starting to eat wet food.
My advise to all of the 'owners' of an IBD cat; read up on the disease and be aware that whatever your vet tells you to do, it's not always the right thing for your cat!
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