Have you been testing him for ketones? I'm concerned. I hope your vet on Thursday (new vet?) will listen. Vetsulin is not a good insulin for cats. I used it. Please test for ketones. Don't let him go into ketoacidosis. Has he been vomiting? Has he been checked for an infection? I'm sorry to ask so many questions. I am just very concerned for your baby. He goes to the vet tomorrow so I will keep you in my thoughts for that vet visit! HUGS!!!
Hey - sorry, i did not get any alerts about replies to this thread.
First off, thank you so much for your response! And thank you for the explanation. We tried looking it up online and found that they grind their teeth when they are in pain but there was not a lot of information about it. Our vet had no idea what is was and why he was doing it. We will show the video to the new vet tomorrow. He's not doing it as bad now, this was at its worst.
I will answer as many of your questions as i can:
Do you know why your kitty would be nauseated? Not sure but it could be pancreatitis
Pancreatitis? (I saw this in your signature.) Yes. He was diagnosed with pancreatitis but only with the blood test. The vet said it's very hard to diagnose and we've spoken to another vet who said she goes off of symptoms a lot of times vs the blood test. He was on zeniquin (antibiotic), cerenia, mirazapine and fluid. at this point, he is only on fluids and we give him cerenia, as needed. he took a couple of doses of mirazapine and regained his appetite very quickly, so we stopped.
How is his appetite? it's good. he's eating the meals we give him, minus maybe a teaspoon each meal. tonite, we introduced a tablespoon of a new food and he went nuts for it.
Does he ever go up to food and sniff it and walk away? He did before he was diagnosed but has been eating ever since.
Do you have to coax him to eat? no, not really. he more plays games with me, so to speak. he eats and then walks away and i fix the food in his bowl and bring him back and he eats again. this goes on a few time but he really eats most of his plate at each meal.
I assume you had labs done in January at diagnosis? Have you attached them to you spreadsheet? (I will look). we did full labs but i have to add them to my sheet - as i am sure you understand, life has been a bit crazy since his diagnosis and we are mainly reading, researching and for a while running back and forth to the vet...and work full time.
If he has pancreatitis you will need most likely to give fluids, pain medication and cerenia and ondansetron. - We don't have a pain med for him. Thankfully, he has never thrown up nor had diarrhea. He has gotten constipated, so we've been giving him miralax in his food.
Have you been testing him for ketones? Yes, daily! He had ketones when first diagnosed and they went away. We've mainly gotten negative results with occasionally trace results.
We have a vet appt with a new vet tomorrow. We are nervous. We've had bad experiences with vets and have used our currently one for a while but neither of our cats had an issue like this. she has not been helpful during any of this. Getting information and a plan from her has been impossible and she won't talk about food, since we refuse to feed Buddy prescription food.
Thank you again for all your kind words and questions. Appreciate it, the thoughts and hugs sooooo much!! - stace
You may get some better nadirs on Vetsulin, but I would be surprised if you got much longevity out of it. I hope he won't have wild BG swings. Good job starting testing! It would be great if you could get the PMPS tests in there too so you can see not only where he begins in a cycle but where he ends up after 12 hours. It's important before giving any insulin to find out if it is even safe to shoot. Maybe his tooth grinding will stop too, if he gets to feeling better. Good to know about the Chewy vets. I haven't used their service yet. Thanks!