11/8/25 New Member - Mackerel

Hi, my ~8 year old cat, Mackerel, just got diagnosed, and it's been an overwhelming few days. He spent 3 days in hospital with pancreatitis, and is now back home. I have a follow up appointment in a few days, and have not yet started at home testing. The vets main concern at this time is making sure he doesn't become hypoglycemic, which was difficult when he was at the hospital. Currently, I am feeding him RC glycobalance + Friskies shreds (which is the wet food he is used to) and giving him 1 unit of Lantus once he has eaten at least half of his meal. He tends to be a grazer, so I leave the food out between meals. He does finish the food well before the next dose time.

My main concern right now is managing his health and my own life. I work a full-time job that requires me to be onsite 5 days a week. I luckily live close by, so I am able to get home on time for meals and insulin. I am just concerned and overwhelmed because this is a pretty significant lifestyle change that I'll have to make (and abosolutely will make for my lil guy). I'm battling a fair amount of guilt having to leave him every day, and I guess I'm looking for words of wisdom that this new diagnosis doesn't have to make me a constantly anxious person. I love this cat with my whole heart, and I've been a bit of a wreck these past few days.

Welcome to FDMB!

Your experience sounds almost exactly like mine. (And Mackerel looks a lot like my kitty.) Gabby was diagnosed with hepatic lipidosis, diabetic ketoacidosis and pancreatitis at the time she was diagnosed with diabetes. She spent several days on the kitty ICU with my vet and the critical care vet telling me not all cats survive what she was going through. She survived. I also worked full time and this was considerably before there was the possibility of working from home. What I can tell you is that once you're past feeling completely overwhelmed, managing your cat's diabetes is manageable. Hopefully, your vet demonstrated how to give an injection. The ICU vet didn't give me any instructions. (I speak fluent "medicalese" and I'm pretty sure they thought I was either an MD or a nurse.) I learned how to test from here and watched YouTube to learn how to give a cat a shot.

So, the good news... Your vet prescribed one of the two really good insulins for treating feline diabetes. (Many vets don't.) The other good news is that the starting dose is appropriate. The bad news is that Glycobalance is not a great food. It's quite high in carbohydrates. This is a link to a food chart that contains information on the nutritional values, including carbs, for most of the canned foods available in the US. We consider a low carb food as less than 10% carbs. The Glycobalance canned food is 14% carbs and the dry food is 24% carbs. The Fancy Feast shreds are all over 11%. If your cat likes Fancy Feast, the Classics, which is a pate style food, is low in carbs.

If you switch the food, do so slowly. Changing to a low carb food will likely cause your cat's blood glucose numbers to drop. I'd also encourage you to start home testing your cat's blood glucose if you're not doing so already. It's the best possible way to ensure Mackerel is safe. We have lots of information on home testing. Many people here use the Walmart Relion glucometer. However, any human meter is fine. There are pet meters but the strips are considerably more expensive than the strips for a human meter. Testing will also give you a much better sense of how your cat is responding to insulin. It helped me to know if I needed to run home at lunch to check on Gabby. It also helped that I have friends who are dedicated cat parents who would understand if I needed to make a stop at home during an evening we were out to check on my cat. You may want to take a look at the link to Gabby's Legacy in my signature. Post #7 is my tribute.

You may also want to read through this post on helping us to help you. If you plan on sticking around here, you'll want to set up a spreadsheet and your signature. The spreadsheet will allow you to track Mackerel's progress and let us follow along. Your signature contains basic information so we don't keep asking you the same question.

Many people here work full time jobs and are able to manage their diabetic cat just fine, either with help from a spouse or other person in the home or all on their own

If you use a programmable timed feeder, you can leave small snacks for your cat to eat while you are at work. Canned food is fine to leave out in a feeder. There are feeders that have ice pack features or fancy cooling features that helps keep food cool but freezing food into small serving sizes and putting the frozen chunks into the feeder works too.

Check the food chart to see if the Friskies shreds are low carb enough (under 10%). https://catinfo.org/docs/CatFoodProteinFatCarbPhosphorusChart.pdf The chart is old so any variety that came out after 2017 won't be on it. Either search the forum for any thread asking about the specific varieties you have or start a new thread to ask.

Thank you for the replies, it's been very reassuring to read.
We just got back from a follow up visit to the vet and Mackerel was fitted with a Libre. The vet has direct access to the readings and will notify me if any dosing needs to change. They also luckily care more that he eats in general over the specific food, so if the glycobalance isn't working that's alright so long as he eats something else low carb/high protein. I've spent a lot of money getting a bunch of foods to try out.
This forum is an invaluable resource, and I'm sure I will be reaching out again.

There's info and tips on using the Libre here Getting Started With Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGMs) for Diabetic Cats