Posted on 01/04/2010 5:16:56 PM PST by 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.
We had a dog with diabetes who survived several years after diagnosis, and many live much longer and do very well. He had a severe case of pancreatitis that led to the diabetes, and lesson learned is never give a dog meat with fat (rib bones), it led to a a health crisis disaster. He had insulin shots twice a day and it was quite manageable. He enjoyed the remainder of his life until the very end when he didn’t respond well to insulin any longer.
The vet told me that cats with diabetes are more easily managed, as a rule, and do quite well, often better than dogs. I wouldn’t worry about giving the shots, the needle is fine gauge and they don’t seem to mind it.
I have a cat I am taking to the vet this week, and I suspect she may have diabetes. She is 12 years old, quite snippy by nature, and will complain if she has to have shots, but should do well. I wouldn’t put an animal down, as some suggest, for having to have shots. They handle many medical problems far better than people do.
our vet wanted us to put our elderly diabetic viking kitty (Ben) in the hospital over night when he had become listless and could not control his muscles well enough to even walk to the water bowl. I brought Ben home with a bag of IV fluids and he was better the next day. Then about a month later he had a check up and the vet almost didn’t recognize him he was doing so much better. The vet had predicted our kitty would not have lasted the night. The vet sent me home with another IV bag ‘just in case’ we ever needed it again.
Ben gave up his fight this past September, more than a year after diagnosis.
MY cat, Ben actually developed a pavlovian reaction to the needle because he knew that after each shot, he got a yummy treat. He adored the canned food the vet prescribed.
It is pretty easy to treat. The best source of info (if no one has pointed you n this direction yet) is Feline Diabetes.com. they have a message board with so many wonderful, helpful people.
I would suggest that the first thing you do when your baby is home is to learn how to test his blood glucose levels yourself. it's not hard and you can use a human glucometer (do not believe your vet when they say otherwise. The human ones are less expensive and all you need do is test it against your vet's meter for accuracy).
The second thing I'd do is get rid of all dry food (if that is what you feed). It is loaded with carbs, which is deadly to a diabetic. It is very important that once diet has been changed, you test blood glucose levels before giving insulin as just the change in diet alone can reduce the levels and the insulin dose should be adjusted to the new levels
I'm sorry to throw so much info at you. It's a little scary at first, but it is so easy once you get used to it. If I can help in any way, please feel free to PM me.
Have had an older cat with diabetes. Had to do her sugars and give her shots but ya know she hung around enjoying all the attention for four more years
I recently switched all my animals (cats and dogs) to Blue Buffalo. It is a little more pricey than other brands, but it has helped out all my kitties with their varying health issues with 1 food. My 2 kittens were getting urinary tract infections on a regular basis and my adult cat has a sensitive stomach. The ingredients in blue buffalo are a lot better than other, cheaper brands. They don’t have fillers and by-products. www.bluebuff.com
Yeah, I feel the same way about human children.
My advice is read the contents label and then ask yourself: if my cat were wild and living off the land, would he/she be eating cornmeal gluten, wheat gluten or sugar? No. And they wouldn’t be consuming all the sugar and salt added to semi-soft food, either. That stuff is horrible for cats or dogs.
Yes, I had a kitty who came down with severe diabetes very suddenly when he was 19. He’d always been slim and it was definitely not the standard overweight-related diabetes. Please freepmail me and I’d be happy to discuss in detail. The regular home nursing care your kitty will need will seem quite overwhelming at first, but becomes very manageable once you learn the ropes and get into a routine.
Please don’t guess at insulin doses — get a simple inexpensive glucose meter and test at least twice a day before giving insulin. At first you’ll be clumsy at this and kitty will get annoyed, but soon you’ll both take it in stride. Get the tiniest insuling needles, 29 gauge, and kitty will barely notice the shots. Mine would get his shot right after I put down a fresh bowl of food for him and he would even stop eating for a second when I gave him the shot.
Your kitty will probably need subcutaneous fluids at home on a regular basis, as diabetes promotes dehydration. You can get the fluids and other supplies very inexpensively from Brico Medical Supplies. Do not purchase any more than your first bag of fluid from your vet or you’ll be pouring huge amounts of money down the drain.
You’ve stated something here that is very important, and everyone needs to pay attention: steroids can affect your pancreas, causing it to fail and the result is diabetes.
If you inform yourself as to what kind of needles to use, and learn to do it in a way that isn’t distressing to the cat, it’s not a hardship for the cat at all. I had a cat who lived to 21, with renal failure for the last 5 years and severe diabetes for the last 1.5. He LOVED getting his subcutaneous fluids every night. Took about 15 minutes, during which time he was lying on my bed getting combed and purring. If I was late with his fluids in the evening, he’d get up on the bed and lie down in the usual spot and meow to remind me. He never noticed the insulin shots — literally kept right on eating while I gave him the shot — I used the smallest gauge needle available.
Hi S And A! =^..^=
Prayers.
Two of the first four ingredients are corn...bad news. Cats do not eat corn in the wild...pet food manufacturers use corn for ONE reason; it is cheap and profitable...same reason they use corn syrup in human 'food'. The 'perfect food' is mice in a blender, but I'll stick with the 'pop top' cans... :-)
If you give the shot correctly, the cat never even knows it’s been given. Scruff the kitty, and give the shot at the back of the neck, the part where the mother cat grabs onto her kitten to carry it about. My vet taught us how to do this, and we gave our little diabetic kitty her insulin twice a day. She liked it, because to her, it just meant she got petted twice a day—she never felt the needle.
Hi Biggirl!
Our cat, Oslo, has had diabetes for 12+ years and we have learned a thing or two:
Cats can be tested on either a toe pad or the ear (we test Oslo on his toe, have never tried the ear). Our first ‘Vet’ told us we could NEVER - EVER! test our cat at home. Quack. We got a new vet.
Meters: we use a ReliOn from WalmMart - 1/2 the cost for supplies than any other brand. We use a Freestyle lancet - it has an adjustable depth - we go 5.5 which is max.
Food - VERY IMPORTANT! As others have mentioned there are great info sources like Feline Diabetes.org(?) (FD) which mention foods. We feed both dry and wet - wet in the AM - dry all as we have three cats and cannot feed twice a day
The dry food: Wellness makes ONE dry cat food called CORE which is ‘PUR’fect for diabetic cats. Really. It is meat in a dry form made by a patented process. All other dry foods can cause a problem.
Wet food: we use Fancy Feast: Gourmet Chicken, Turkey & Giblet Feast and Tender Beef Feast. All 100% safe. We found out about the wet food on the FD forum. And the cats seem to like it.
Insulin: the tricky part. Cats like a beef based insulin - Lente. It is now illegal and not made anywhere. Pity. Oslo liked it, so we had to change insulin and re-regulate him.
For some years we have been giving him a beef/pork insulin - PZI - but, alas it is now no longer made. We were planning to switch him over to Vetsilin this week,but our really good Vet told us that this, too, has been discontinued.
Insulin available:
Humulin - R: NEVER USE THIS! It is extremely fast acting and is only used in emergencies in clinical settings.
Humulin -N: A possibility, but possibly too fast acting in a cat and not long enough in duration (for those human diabetics reading this, cats metabolize insulin twice as fast as humans, and its duration is 1/2 as fast as well.
ProZinc - 100% perfect for your cat, as it is the first insulin FDA approved for cats (WTF? why does cat insulin need this approval?) and costs,according to our Vet $125.00.
GLARGINE - This is what we are going to try next. Our Vet wants $150.00 per vial,but we are going to have her write us a prescription that we will fill at our Pharmacy for ‘Lantus’ - the same insulin branded for humans - link:
http://www.marvistavet.com/html/body_glargine_insulin.html
Note the statement in red at the bottom of the page - perhaps good news for you and your cat. It's about $100.00 per vial. A vial can last three months or more depending upon where your cat ‘settles in’ at.
All of our cat insulin has been u40, and the Lantus is u100 (means that there are 100 units in cc verses 40 units per cc. We'll use less.
Keep your insulin in the refrigerator and it will last for many months.
Good luck and please feel free to PM me with any questions you may have. I'll gladly attempt to answer them.
We have several cats and Blue Buffalo was the one food that they all could eat; it stopped one cat’s bloody stool, another threw up all the time and it seemed all had hair ball problems even when we added the malt for hairballs. Once we started them on Blue Buffalo, they all seemed much better and most of those symptoms went away completely.
Blue Buffalo is well worth the extra expense, especially if you have multiple cats.
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