-Samantha -
Member Since 2015
Hi everyone! Captain is about 12 years old, not sure because we rescued him. When we adopted him and his brother Theo in May of 2013 he was 26 pounds of nothing but love and affection!
Besides being extremely overweight he had severe ear, eye, mouth, and skin infections. a ton of vet visits, test, antibiotics,creams,drops, and a good dental pulling more than half of his cracked and rotting teeth and he was good as new thanks to our ABSOLUTELY AMAZINGGG VET! We quickly put his food lovin' butt on a diet at the recommendation of my vet! From may 2013 to February 2014 we got him down to 18 pounds.
They are the best cats in the world! Despite all the abuse they went through over the years of their lives, they couldn't be anymore perfect! They fit right in with our other children ( 3 dogs).
In August of 2014 we decided to move to Florida. In the beginning of December I noticed Captain was always hungry and thirty to the point he would break into the cabinets to rip the dry blue buffalo bags open when we weren't home. He started peeing outside his litter box, I immediately brought him to a vet. He was diagnosed with a UTI and put on antibiotics. He got worse over the next 2 weeks and we were at the vet four times changing his antibiotics. The third week, the vet started doing blood work and other test where he found nothing wrong and just kept giving more antibiotics. I finally got fed up with this answer after he lost 4 pounds and seeming like he was starving. I brought him to 2 new vets the following day that gave me the same answer and wouldn't investigate further and told me I was over reacting and panicking over something that wasn't a big deal ... I brought him to another vet(a "state of the art animal specialist hospital") the next day, said nothing at all was wrong with my cat. I gave him my list of concerns and a couple thousand dollars later,and I quote " You need to realize that your cat is old and his time to go to the big kennel in the sky might be coming soon." I was appalled by just how heartless and rude a vet could be!! I stormed out the door and called my vet we used for many years before we moved not knowing where else to turn after 4 vets making me feel like i was crazy! He said to have him checked for diabetes. So the next day that's what we did, onto yet another vet. Checked his blood work and said everything came back fine so he ran more tests, again everything was fine, hes just getting old. I was devastated.. over the next week he lost even more weight and got even worse. We finally decided to move back up north due to some other problems we were having. The first thing I did when we got back was take Captain to my vet. Within 20 minutes he had confirmed tat Captains sugar was nearly 800 and he was diagnosed with diabetes on January 22nd... He was also down to 10.5 pounds now and you could see all the bones in his body
How is it possible that all these vets couldn't find anything wrong with him while he was practically wasting away?! Are vets really that uneducated about the matter? My mind is still blown!!
Fast forward to today: My vet put him on Vetsulin and we changed his food. He loves his dry, cant eat any fish because of allergies, and VERY picky. I'm having a hard time getting him to eat just wet food. we tried a few brands and the only one he will even eat more than once is Authority but their flavors that aren't fish are pretty limited and he still picks at it then screams for food like hes starving 20 minutes later. We are also having a hard time getting his sugar under control. My vet found a alphatrak 2 on amazon and recommended i order it to do at home testing since it was a lot cheaper than what he could order one for me for. hopefully it should be here by Wednesday. But in the meantime, he still isn't acting himself at all and we cant seem to get his insulin right because he picks at his food so badly. Is there any dry foods that diabetic cats can have? my vet said the prescription one is worse than a store bought one and didn't know any other alternatives. We also put him on probiotics last week because his insides smelled like he was rotting away!
This adventure has been mentally draining and I still feel so confused over all of it and am very worried about my cat. How long does it normally take to get a cat regulated? Is there anything else i can be doing to help him?
Sorry this is so long, I just am overwhelmed with what a process this whole thing has been and needed to vent! lol..
Besides being extremely overweight he had severe ear, eye, mouth, and skin infections. a ton of vet visits, test, antibiotics,creams,drops, and a good dental pulling more than half of his cracked and rotting teeth and he was good as new thanks to our ABSOLUTELY AMAZINGGG VET! We quickly put his food lovin' butt on a diet at the recommendation of my vet! From may 2013 to February 2014 we got him down to 18 pounds.
They are the best cats in the world! Despite all the abuse they went through over the years of their lives, they couldn't be anymore perfect! They fit right in with our other children ( 3 dogs).
In August of 2014 we decided to move to Florida. In the beginning of December I noticed Captain was always hungry and thirty to the point he would break into the cabinets to rip the dry blue buffalo bags open when we weren't home. He started peeing outside his litter box, I immediately brought him to a vet. He was diagnosed with a UTI and put on antibiotics. He got worse over the next 2 weeks and we were at the vet four times changing his antibiotics. The third week, the vet started doing blood work and other test where he found nothing wrong and just kept giving more antibiotics. I finally got fed up with this answer after he lost 4 pounds and seeming like he was starving. I brought him to 2 new vets the following day that gave me the same answer and wouldn't investigate further and told me I was over reacting and panicking over something that wasn't a big deal ... I brought him to another vet(a "state of the art animal specialist hospital") the next day, said nothing at all was wrong with my cat. I gave him my list of concerns and a couple thousand dollars later,and I quote " You need to realize that your cat is old and his time to go to the big kennel in the sky might be coming soon." I was appalled by just how heartless and rude a vet could be!! I stormed out the door and called my vet we used for many years before we moved not knowing where else to turn after 4 vets making me feel like i was crazy! He said to have him checked for diabetes. So the next day that's what we did, onto yet another vet. Checked his blood work and said everything came back fine so he ran more tests, again everything was fine, hes just getting old. I was devastated.. over the next week he lost even more weight and got even worse. We finally decided to move back up north due to some other problems we were having. The first thing I did when we got back was take Captain to my vet. Within 20 minutes he had confirmed tat Captains sugar was nearly 800 and he was diagnosed with diabetes on January 22nd... He was also down to 10.5 pounds now and you could see all the bones in his body
How is it possible that all these vets couldn't find anything wrong with him while he was practically wasting away?! Are vets really that uneducated about the matter? My mind is still blown!!
Fast forward to today: My vet put him on Vetsulin and we changed his food. He loves his dry, cant eat any fish because of allergies, and VERY picky. I'm having a hard time getting him to eat just wet food. we tried a few brands and the only one he will even eat more than once is Authority but their flavors that aren't fish are pretty limited and he still picks at it then screams for food like hes starving 20 minutes later. We are also having a hard time getting his sugar under control. My vet found a alphatrak 2 on amazon and recommended i order it to do at home testing since it was a lot cheaper than what he could order one for me for. hopefully it should be here by Wednesday. But in the meantime, he still isn't acting himself at all and we cant seem to get his insulin right because he picks at his food so badly. Is there any dry foods that diabetic cats can have? my vet said the prescription one is worse than a store bought one and didn't know any other alternatives. We also put him on probiotics last week because his insides smelled like he was rotting away!
This adventure has been mentally draining and I still feel so confused over all of it and am very worried about my cat. How long does it normally take to get a cat regulated? Is there anything else i can be doing to help him?
Sorry this is so long, I just am overwhelmed with what a process this whole thing has been and needed to vent! lol..
If you can get them to eat that, it looks like you've at least got the texture thing beat. Is Captain doing more than licking yet? Do you think you could fool the big lug by mixing 25% wet Friskies with 75% of your special "blend", then 50/50, etc? But really, Friskies and Authority are a huge improvement over dry, you shouldn't worry about the quality thing at this point. It's so overwhelming feeling like you have to change 15 million things at once, and learn 20 kajillion things while changing the 15 million things.
Try BJ's advice, really, really slow. 
)