Apparently the article I posted a link to has been moved, so I'll print
it here:

The 'CatKins' diet
   The feline diet: a historical look

When trying to develop a diet for cats, look no further than what a cat
would eat in the wild: mice. Cats shouldn't be eating foods that they
have difficulty processing, according to Dr. Deborah Greco, a
veterinarian at the Animal Medical Center in New York City.

This internal medicine specialist, who spoke at a Sunday session, isn't
arguing that pet owners should be shopping for mice to please Fluffy.
Rather, they should be thinking about the nutrition in a mouse—a mouse
is 3 percent carbohydrate, 40 percent protein, and 50 percent fat.

Since cats became domesticated, they have been fed various diets, and
some of these diets were developed with little thought as to their
natural diet in the wild. The result hasn't been good. "Many of the
diseases that we treat are a result of the diets we give them," said Dr.
Greco, who rattled off several examples.

Before the advent of commercial diets, owners fed cats organ meats that
are low in calcium and high in phosphorus. This led to nutritional
secondary hyperparathyroidism. In the 1980s, scientists linked a high
incidence of struvite stones to high pH levels in food. And in the
1990s, scientists found that feeding acidifying diets to cats with
struvite stones lead to an increased incidence of oxalate stones. Diets
were reformulated to a more neutral pH. "The ideal pH is 6.5," says Dr
Greco, which is the pH found in a mouse.

Also in the late 1980s, scientists traced a high incidence of dilated
cardiomyopathy to taurine deficiency, and other researchers found that
certain diets low in potassium caused hypokalemic nephropathy. Each
time, nutritionists had to go back to the drawing board.

Today, cats are facing a different problem: an epidemic of obesity that
comes with a price tag. "Thirty-five to 40 percent of cats are obese,"
said Dr. Greco, who says the peak years of obesity is between the ages
of seven to 12 years.

"Obese cats are four times as likely to develop diabetes mellitus and
five times as likely to develop lameness." Fat cats also have a higher
incidence of non-allergic skin disease, most likely caused by the cat's
inability to clean themselves as effectively, due to their size. This
obesity is most likely the cause of diets with too high a carbohydrate
content.

"Cats are unique in the way they handle protein, carbohydrates, and
fat," Dr. Greco said. Cats are strict carnivores and, because of this,
they have a tremendous ability to produce glucose from protein, but have
difficulty processing carbohydrates. The feline liver has normal
hexokinase activity, but no glucokinase activity. Thus, cats are limited
in their ability to mop up excess glucose and store glycogen. "What
happens is that glucose is going to hang around for a long period of
time," she said, and it eventually becomes fat.

In addition, unlike humans, protein is the stimulus for insulin release
in cats. Cats have adapted to high protein diets by being insulin
resistant. This maintains blood glucose during periods of fasting,
convenient for a cat in the wild, but not so good for pets eating a lot
of carbohydrates.

"When you take an individual that is genetically programmed to consume
high protein and low carbohydrates, and you put them on a high
carbohydrate diet, what happens is their insulin resistance works
against them," she said. "Their blood glucose concentrations are too
high ... they can't overcome that, and they start to release more and
more insulin in an attempt to reduce blood glucose levels." This doesn't
work, however, and the cat eventually develops type 2 diabetes mellitus.
The cat gets amyloid deposition in the pancreas, exhaustion of the
pancreatic cells, and glucose toxicity from consumption of large amounts
of carbohydrates.

So what's Dr. Greco's ideal cat food diet? She recommends a wet food,
high in protein, high in fat, and low in carbohydrates. It's basically a
"CatKins" diet, much like the Atkins diet popular today. This diet is
going to keep a cat slim and help it avoid diabetes.

She recommends a wet cat food because if you are trying to mimic what a
cat eats in the wild, just think of how much water a mouse contains. Wet
cat food is going to give you a pH that is ideal and is, thus, the best
way to prevent feline lower urinary tract inflammation. Dr. Greco said.
In addition, a cat's jaws and teeth are designed for shearing and
tearing meat, and cats that eat dry food grind it in a way that it ends
up between their teeth. There it ferments into sugar and acid, thereby
causing dental problems.

According to Dr. Greco, it all comes down to common sense. "We must use
a cat's natural diet as a guideline."

Megan

                                   

That's actually incorrect. Hills Prescription Diet makes a dry food specially
catered to diabetics, and they are currently working on a better brand. My cat
has been on the Hill W/D diet for a year, and the vet told me that his
bloodwork is perfect, that he's an extremely healthy diabetic, one of the
healthiest she's seen.

You also have to take into account the type of diabetes the cat has. One with
the uncomplicated form may do better on dry.

You should be feeding him a canned food with very few carbs,

My vet recommends small food intake periodically throughout the day. By waiting
12 hours for the cat to eat, you risk a sugar crash!!!  Also, it really doesn't
matter if he eats right before his shot, as it takes a few hours for the
insulin to get into the system.

The Wellness brand canned varieties would be an excellent