Unless your kitties are all from the same litter, chances are good the issue goes back to diet (still goes back to diet, even if they are related). There are two types of diabetes – type I is juvenile onset (most common in dogs and young humans), type II is adult onset (most common in overweight humans and cats). I love a big kitty, but overly huge sets our sweet putty-tats at risk.
So what happens in our cats? Most readily available cat food has cute shapes and pretty colors, but is made from corn and other carbohydrate sources. Cats are carnivores – they need to eat meat. When we feed them carbs, they get overly fat which stresses their pancreas. The pancreas makes insulin, which regulates sugar. When the pancreas works too hard, it loses its ability to respond to sugar, and our cat becomes diabetic.
While this is a really simplified explanation, the bottom line is cats need to eat meat. When selecting what to feed your cat – consider feeding real meat, our meat and eggs, you can buy prepackaged raw or dehydrated meats, canned food with meat and no carbohydrates in the ingredients, last choice is dry food with meat as the number one ingredient, no corn, no by-products, no grain. Stay tuned for why we should feed canned/moist foods to our cats, not dry.