My furry companion is drinking and urinating frequently even though his blood glucose is regulated

[dnn]

I just did a glucose test and it's at 3.5 mmol/L. I've been testing him a couple times a week and he is always fine.

This started after an episode where he wouldn't eat at all and I had to struggle to feed him anything, but then got him on a soft food only diet without insulin treatment during that period hoping maybe he would go in to remission, his blood glucose levels during that time were fine.

After a week or two on the soft food diet he started getting picky and his health was deteriorating once again. I put him on a diabetic friendly hard food with insulin treatment again and he's been doing fine since then, even his chronic throwing up (something he has had for years) has pretty much subsided.

He has been drinking excessively (even going back to his water dish several minutes after leaving it) and urinating around 10 times in a 24 hour period

He is also insatiably hungry all day, even an hour after feeding. Tonight he was following me around for a couple hours right after I fed him, it seems his hunger is getting worse by the week.

I'm afraid I might have cause renal failure to develop when I had him on the soft food only diet without insulin treatment?

 

[Chris & China (GA)]

Putting him onto a canned diet is the best thing you could do for his kidneys!!

Kidneys are the weakest organ in all cats, even more so in diabetics, so the more water, the better. Canned food mimics the natural diet of a cat a lot better than any dry can....A mouse is about 80% water!

The reason he's drinking so much could be several things....If you're only testing occasionally, you really don't know what's going on inside his body.....His diabetes could be less regulated than you think it is.

Kidney failure can also cause cats to drink more....only way to know how his kidneys are doing is by having bloodwork done at your vets office. There's a fairly new test called the SDMA that's supposed to catch kidney failure earlier, but it's only done by IDEXX lab....If your vet uses Antech, they'd have to specifically send a blood sample to IDEXX to run the SDMA

Probably the reason for the frequent urination is because of all the water he's drinking.....what goes in, must come out! In uncontrolled diabetics, they drink more to try to "dilute" the glucose out of their bloodstream...it's natures way of trying to get the blood glucose down....but again, if they drink more, they pee more!

 

[dnn]

Putting him onto a canned diet is the best thing you could do for his kidneys!!

Kidneys are the weakest organ in all cats, even more so in diabetics, so the more water, the better. Canned food mimics the natural diet of a cat a lot better than any dry can....A mouse is about 80% water!

The reason he's drinking so much could be several things....If you're only testing occasionally, you really don't know what's going on inside his body.....His diabetes could be less regulated than you think it is.

Kidney failure can also cause cats to drink more....only way to know how his kidneys are doing is by having bloodwork done at your vets office. There's a fairly new test called the SDMA that's supposed to catch kidney failure earlier, but it's only done by IDEXX lab....If your vet uses Antech, they'd have to specifically send a blood sample to IDEXX to run the SDMA

Probably the reason for the frequent urination is because of all the water he's drinking.....what goes in, must come out! In uncontrolled diabetics, they drink more to try to "dilute" the glucose out of their bloodstream...it's natures way of trying to get the blood glucose down....but again, if they drink more, they pee more!

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I've emailed the contact email given for support but have yet to hear back.

 

[Larry and Kitties]

Has tests to determine hyperthyroidism (bood test of T4 and maybe free T4 too) and kidney problems (blood and urine specific gravity) been recently performed?

 

[dnn]

Has tests to determine hyperthyroidism (bood test of T4 and maybe free T4 too) and kidney problems (blood and urine specific gravity) been recently performed?

No not recently, but in the past yes. I called around yesterday and was quoted $$363.00 for a blood panel (not full) and the new SDMA. Which unfortunately I can not afford. And if I was to do them separately the cost would be more. Since they both would be going to IDEXX I would get a discount.