Elderly Viking Kitty with Diabetes

1/4/10 | Battle Axe

[Battle Axe]

Miss Peach has been a Viking Kitty since I have been on Free Republic, but tonight she is in the hospital with severe diabetes.

Is there anyone else how has come across this problem?

What did you do and what was the outcome?

The sugar reading was 417. She will be 15 years old in 7 weeks.

[Battle Axe]

News from the vet’s office is that she made it through the night.....that was not in question until they tried to get blood and she fought tooth and nail.

She is very grumpy with the staff.

WELL THAT IS A GOOD SIGN. SHE IS NORMALLY GRUMPY.

ba

[Bacon Man]

Our calico Ginger has been diabetic for a little over a year now. As many have said, its pretty easy to deal with. Give the shot while they’re feeding and they won’t even notice. Keep her on a fixed, low carb diet. Once you get her blood sugar normalized, it’ll simply be a matter of keeping an eye on her water intake and appetite. Either of those increase and you’ll probably need to adjust the dose. After a while I found I could tell by the smell of her urine. The ammonia smell will turn almost sweet.

You might want to get her checked for a pancreatic tumor. That turned out to be the cause of Ginger’s diabetes. Had we discovered it early surgery might have been a viable option, but by the time we found out it was to the point that surgery would have been really complicated, with a high probability that she wouldn’t survive. Since then we’ve just been keeping her comfortable until its time to put her down.

[Nepeta]

We have fed our two Royal Canin Indoors Intense Hairball formula for years. It is expensive but they are my babies and like to "free feed". Is this a bad food for them. I will switch tomorrow if somebody can give me some guidance. Please???

Read the label. If the formula contains grains (and as far as I have seen, ALL dry formulas DO, since they need them to bind together--rice is no better than corn when it comes to cats), switch to a good canned food with low fibre content (see the table in www.felinediabetes.com)

Hairballs are miserable, especially when you step on the remains in the dark. Control hairballs by brushing kitty and feeding a hair ball remedy from a tube, or margarine or butter.

[Nepeta]

News from the vet’s office is that she made it through the night.....that was not in question until they tried to get blood and she fought tooth and nail.

Taking blood to measure blood sugar levels is best done at home. Cats are notorious for becoming so upset in veterinary settings that the results cannot be trusted! Better to wrap kitty in a towel with her head sticking out, and quickly pierce the ear (there is a blood vessel that runs along the edge of the ears) and get a sample. That will yield a far more reliable number than the values obtained in an unfamiliar, stressful environment.

[boatbums]

Thanks for the reply. I’ll look into it.

[boatbums]

Thank you for the reply. I think I’m going to try Blue Buffalo canned in the morning and leave out the Royal Canin for free feed and see how they do. Neither has any health problems and are still young (6 1/2 and 16 mo.). They are both long-haired so they need the hairball control (especially the Ragdoll). I don’t like the idea of forcing petroleum products down them, if they can get what they need from the food.

[Slings and Arrows]

Great! May she recover fully. (And grumpily.)

[boatbums]

Thanks for the info. Here I thought I was giving them “the best”. What do you think about giving them canned once a day and then letting them free feed the Royal Canin the rest of the time? Neither have any health problems and are still young (6 1/2 yrs. and 16 mo.).

[who knows what evil?]

Here I thought I was giving them “the best”.

Many of us fall for the marketing...I have no idea how such a diet would affect your animals...all I can stand on is that the corn products are not good for them. You have to watch for corn and other unhealthy 'fillers'...

[boatbums]

Thanks for your reply. I appreciate it. They do not have any health problems now (other than the occasional hairball) and I want to keep them that way. I am going to Petsmart today to get some Blue Buffalo canned to give them once a day. Do you think letting them continue on free feeding the dry Royal Canin would be harmful? They both like it a lot and I don’t know how they would respond to a change...it’s all they have ever eaten (outside of treats - which have always been freeze-dried chicken, salmon or bonita flakes).

[going hot]

Corn syrup in human food = diabetes; corn meal in pet food = diabetes. Simple as that.

Very succinct, erudite, pithy, accurate, and quite easy to remember.

Beats the heck out of taking years to commit to memory big old nasty texts about metabolism, endocrinology, nutrition, physiology, and lesser related tomes.

Those dang RD's* need to spend more time on the net.

*RD=real doctors

[boatbums]

My vet, who is a cat-only vet and who breeds Main Coon cats, has always said that a dry diet was fine. Guess like human doctors, they don’t always get nutritional training.

[who knows what evil?]

Guess like human doctors, they don’t always get nutritional training.

That is correct. You will note that many vets also sell the Science Diet line of foods...the dry foods contain corn products. Oops.

[who knows what evil?]

Cute. It should be obvious to anyone that my little formula is a blatant generalization, but most would agree that avoiding those products (along with sugars) would reduce your chances of developing diabetes...is that a guarantee? Of course not.

[ellery]

I’m glad she’s (grumpily) doing okay—I’m sorry you’re going through this. My grumpiest kitty was diagnosed with diabetes a couple of years ago. We give her an insulin injection twice a day, which she surprisingly doesn’t mind. We also switched her to gluten-free Fancy Feast, which she seems to like. She’s doing a lot better—her fur is thicker now, and she’s back to her playful-but-peevish self. :) Good luck—please keep us posted.

[boatbums]

I hope your baby does well. They are all so precious to us, aren't they?

Here's my Ragdoll, Stella.

[going hot]

Reading the first 70 replies, I was amused at the simple, yet most effective remedies put forth by some. Yours just happened to catch my eye.

I apoligize for not seeing it for the blatant generalization you say it was.

Perhaps I should reread the entire thread and see if there are any more similar.

:-)

[going hot]

My vet, who is a cat-only vet and who breeds Main Coon cats, has always said that a dry diet was fine. Guess like human doctors, they don’t always get nutritional training.

Snicker

[Nepeta]

When I changed my 3 cats over to canned only, one of them whined and cried for days, reluctant to eat the canned food. Cats will continue to eat whatever they wish--I would take up the dry food and not offer them the opportunity to continue eating it.

The 'whiner' now wakes me at 4.30 to be fed canned food.

[Nepeta]

My vet, who is a cat-only vet and who breeds Main Coon cats, has always said that a dry diet was fine. Guess like human doctors, they don’t always get nutritional training.

The work indicating that cats are obligate carnivores is relatively recent. Even into the 1970s most formulation of cat food was based upon dog studies, with the assumption made that they were both domesticated predators.

My cousin the pathologist says a lot of his MD classmates never bother learning anything after the day they are turned loose to practice. No doubt it is the same way with some DVMs. The feline diabetes site has info and links to work from DVMs who ARE current. This obligate carnivore work is legitimate science.