Cat Owners

Is anyone treating a feline furbaby with diabetes?

not currenly but i have had a diabetic cat in the past. i know how freaked out i was after mine had been diagnosed with it so i know how hard this must be for you to try and deal with what youre going through right now.

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Originally Posted by Que Sera Sera not currenly but i have had a diabetic cat in the past. i know how freaked out i was after mine had been diagnosed with it so i know how hard this must be for you to try and deal with what youre going through right now.

Thank you. She's especially precious to me, so yeah...this is hard. Basically, an entirely new way of living my/our lives. Did you home test? What did you feed your cat?

My cat used to be obese and I was worried about diabetes. But I have been feeding him less and he's lost a good amount of weight.

None of my cats have had diabetes (to our knowledge)

ive tried for days to reply back to you but just kept rambling on & on all over the gamit of random thoughts about this subject. ttying to give some advice & heads ups & ideas & what to expect as time goes on ...
bottom line .. i wont try to have psysic powers to be telling you i absolutely know for a fact whats going on in your personal case right now so il just reflect back on what i had going on with me & my diabetic cat i guess to for some insight that might be of some help to you. my life right after we found out our cat was diabetic was a pure tsunami sized freaked out mess of mayhem which for me began with my meltdown at the vets office 15 seconds after i heard her say the work "diabetis". anyway .. i was an emotional wreck of panic & worried & upset & regret & sadness & hope & negativity & guilt & defiance & combativness & compassion & studious & a heap of 1000s of other things all running around in mind all at once to the point i was simply overwhelmed, exhausted & stressed out to the brink of colllapse.
which turns out was all absolutely just flat out stupid, dumb, uncalled for, unessary, illogical, overblown, farfetched, invalid, impossible, irrational, bs hogwash waste of time!
i wont sugar coat it here for you because this initial stage of this was a real doosey of one heck of rocky rough rollercoaster ride to have to go thru. dont worry you can do this everything is gonna be just fine. its probably gonna take a few months to get all the ins & outs & dosing etc figured out & dealt with to get everything in check and back under control so just try to breath & hang on and i promise you all this rigamoral here in the beginning is the worst part of it and once its overwith your cat & you will go back to the same old normal routine life as before all this started .. all thats gonna be different is her needing insulin shots & to get her numbers checked & every so often there will be some ups & downs in her numbers that take bit of tweeking to handle.
you asked about food ... the prescription diabetic food the vet suggested she go on didnt work in our case because we are a multi cat household & feeding her one type food while not letting her eat the food all the rest ate was simply not gonna work so we just kept on feeding her what she was eating already a mix of iams, proplan & purina one.
now that ive still managed to ramble on & on hopefull some of it might help you out some.

oh yea .. we did the shots & iv fluids & went to the vet for the blood work for her numbers ...
the early stages we did a dose for 3 or 4 days & go get blood work & if ok kept on that dose a few more days & went to vet to get check again... then after finally found a dose that her numbers stayed within normal range we then would go on a monthly basis for rechecks to be sure it was still ok...
if at any point we noticed something "off" with her we took her to the vet right away.
im a beliver in a nutrient suppliment called vita cal.. its in a "tube" at the pet store & its a gooey gel/paste substance you just put a dab on their nose or top of a front paw ... please please please id check to see if your vet oks it 1st tho ok... not that its harmful like a prescripted medicine could possibly be but there are some drawbacks under some circumstances when its not a good time to give it to them... and thats a question the vet is who needs to advise you on giving it or not... im simply letting you know that type of thing is available & i have used it on many of my cats lots of times under many sets of different circumstsnces over the years & i believe it is very beneficial. but i never just start giving it to a cat on my own accord without running it by the vet 1st to be sure its ok to or not.
the other thing run by with the vet ... with diabetic animals they outta be drinking as much water as they possibly can ... vet long time ago gave me a way to help with that & what you do is get NO SODIUM boullion & mix a very small amount into the water dish & its tastier to them than plain water & encourages them to drink more .. again NO SODIUM boullion & please please please check with your vet 1st ok.
also maybe think about adding one of those fountain type water bowls those are a big hit with my cats. maybe think about switching to using distilled water for her too..

Quote:

Originally Posted by Que Sera Sera ive tried for days to reply back to you but just kept rambling on & on all over the gamit of random thoughts about this subject. ttying to give some advice & heads ups & ideas & what to expect as time goes on ... bottom line .. i wont try to have psysic powers to be telling you i absolutely know for a fact whats going on in your personal case right now so il just reflect back on what i had going on with me & my diabetic cat i guess to for some insight that might be of some help to you. my life right after we found out our cat was diabetic was a pure tsunami sized freaked out mess of mayhem which for me began with my meltdown at the vets office 15 seconds after i heard her say the work "diabetis". anyway .. i was an emotional wreck of panic & worried & upset & regret & sadness & hope & negativity & guilt & defiance & combativness & compassion & studious & a heap of 1000s of other things all running around in mind all at once to the point i was simply overwhelmed, exhausted & stressed out to the brink of colllapse. which turns out was all absolutely just flat out stupid, dumb, uncalled for, unessary, illogical, overblown, farfetched, invalid, impossible, irrational, bs hogwash waste of time! i wont sugar coat it here for you because this initial stage of this was a real doosey of one heck of rocky rough rollercoaster ride to have to go thru. dont worry you can do this everything is gonna be just fine. its probably gonna take a few months to get all the ins & outs & dosing etc figured out & dealt with to get everything in check and back under control so just try to breath & hang on and i promise you all this rigamoral here in the beginning is the worst part of it and once its overwith your cat & you will go back to the same old normal routine life as before all this started .. all thats gonna be different is her needing insulin shots & to get her numbers checked & every so often there will be some ups & downs in her numbers that take bit of tweeking to handle. you asked about food ... the prescription diabetic food the vet suggested she go on didnt work in our case because we are a multi cat household & feeding her one type food while not letting her eat the food all the rest ate was simply not gonna work so we just kept on feeding her what she was eating already a mix of iams, proplan & purina one. now that ive still managed to ramble on & on hopefull some of it might help you out some.

Thank you so much for sharing your experience!

Actually, Sidney was diagnosed in July 2021. So it's been a while. She was losing weight, terribly thirsty, insanely hungry, and peeing huge pees, frequently. When the vet called and told me Sid had diabetes I didn't think much of it, except to be thankful because I knew there was treatment for it.

I had NO idea of what was to come. The fear, guilt, fear, severe anxiety, fear, sleeplessness...did I say fear... Complete, utter exhaustion. And Sidney is a precious angel, never once has she resisted getting tested, shots...in fact, she somehow knows when it's time to get her glucose checked and she'll walk into the kitchen.

I do home test - I didn't for the first six months. Then I joined a support group and they strongly advised home testing. Sid's vet encouraged that, so after 2 curves at the vet's office I bought the supplies for testing and did curves at home and reported them to her vet.

I still wasn't doing regular testing until one afternoon, Sid looked odd...spacey. I had the idea to test her and sure enough, she was hypo. That scared me so much. I learned how to bring her up from hypo and after that I began regularly testing her, 4 times per day.

The food thing has been the toughest. I have 5 cats who had always free-fed. I stopped the free feeding and started doing scheduled feeding. Somehow, I managed that for some months until I realized I had to change something. Food changes, more food changes...we're still doing food adjustments right now. Everybody is getting a diabetic diet, but the very high protein/almost no carb kibble is giving a couple of them bad diarrhea. So they're all getting more wet food and we're switching over to a high protein but not quite as low carb dry for free feeding. Fingers crossed xx

The support group I'm in is in many ways very informative and helpful; in some ways they are fanatic. The admins advocate a wet only diet and anyone who feeds kibble is subtly or overtly judged. So I take what I find doable from that group.

We're still doing adjustments with dosage. 2 units Lantus worked great for months, then it seemed 2 was too high. So it was back to square 1. It's hard to avoid the bounces.

I started using a cat fountain 2 years ago and they love it! A wonderful thing to have around. I have regular dishes of water sitting in various places around my apartment. The bouillon idea is excellent!

Again - thank you so much for your input. I really appreciate it.

ohhh a support group would have been great to have had! with me nonstop calling & bothering my vet asking questions about all this im surprised she didnt disown us as clients!

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Originally Posted by Que Sera Sera ohhh a support group would have been great to have had! with me nonstop calling & bothering my vet asking questions about all this im surprised she didnt disown us as clients!

Overall, the support group is absolutely amazing. They taught me what to do if Sidney is hypo. So many things. Tremendously helpful.

My beloved Cat Esther who I had to put down last year because of her diabetes, we couldn't keep her in range and there were other health issues, she was 16 and the vet was like honestly if she were my cat, I would let her go, so we did even though it broke my heart.

But she had diabetes treated for 2.5 years. We struggled to keep her numbers in range and she had to be hospitalized a few times for a few days at a time where they could monitor her every hour. We used to free feed her and then had to go to structured eating times which she did not like. She flat out refused to eat the diabetic wet food no matter what I tried, so we stuck to the prescription dry food and also did unsalted chicken broth for her which she loved.

We gave her another good 2 years of life before she went really downhill and doing the insulin shots and stuff twice a day just became normal to us. I have two other cats and I hope they never get diabetes but if they do I know what we are getting into.

Best of luck to you and your furbaby.

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Originally Posted by SlumberKitty My beloved Cat Esther who I had to put down last year because of her diabetes, we couldn't keep her in range and there were other health issues, she was 16 and the vet was like honestly if she were my cat, I would let her go, so we did even though it broke my heart. But she had diabetes treated for 2.5 years. We struggled to keep her numbers in range and she had to be hospitalized a few times for a few days at a time where they could monitor her every hour. We used to free feed her and then had to go to structured eating times which she did not like. She flat out refused to eat the diabetic wet food no matter what I tried, so we stuck to the prescription dry food and also did unsalted chicken broth for her which she loved. We gave her another good 2 years of life before she went really downhill and doing the insulin shots and stuff twice a day just became normal to us. I have two other cats and I hope they never get diabetes but if they do I know what we are getting into. Best of luck to you and your furbaby.

Thank you. Esther is such a sweet name for a cat.

Thank you for sharing your story, Slumberkitty

Treating a cat with diabetes is a heroic journey for the human, and for the cat.

I am so, so sorry for your loss

My parents had a diabetic cat. He had to get daily shots and he ate doctor prescribed wet and dry food only