? 12/30/25, Benny, AMPS 457, +5 328, Up Evening Dose?

Katie & Benny

Katie & Benny

Member Since 2025
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Benny has been riding in the pinks and reds since his return from the hospital 5 days ago. Two days ago we changed his morning dose to 1Ul and kept his evening dose to .5Ul. The doctors at the hospital made this same adjustment while he was hospitalized and very quickly he had low-hypo numbers. We have about 3 hours until his evening dose and I am wondering if we should do 1Ul tonight since he seems to continue riding high? My biggest fear is ketones returning since he obviously develops them quite easily.

While Benny has been home his personality and energy has stayed pretty consistent and much improved since pre-hospitalization, but I do feel like his polyphagia is returning. He will wait for hours in the kitchen for his next meal and he is currently getting a breakfast, lunch and dinner. He has also been urinating A LOT. The hospital did not mention this happening while he was there but he has been urinating a lot since his diagnosis in September. On Sunday, he used the bathroom 13 times, Monday it was 11 times, today it has been 9 times by mid-afternoon.

I also don’t think I have mentioned this in the forum but Benny pretty much never uses his litter box at this point. He hasn’t reliably used a box since July. He has gotten better at using the pee pads I’ve spread around but I would really like to get him back in the box as this is most of what keeps me up at night, trying to keep the apartment clean and not covered in soiled pee pads. I do fear at this point this has become behavioral and have no idea where to begin to get him using the box again. Is there something I should try to do now to encourage his use of the boxes or is this something I should wait and see if it improves once his glucose improves? I keep them clean with the litter he used to use before diagnosis and liked and the boxes are in the quietest rooms.
 
Hi Katie, great news on negative ketones yesterday! One thing to think about is how low is this dose taking Benny? Without nighttime data or a before bed test, it’s really hard to say. He might be bouncing from the blues on December 27th, or he may have had some other lower numbers in an evening cycle recently that you didn’t see. Bounces can happen when the cat either goes lower than they are used to or when they have a steep drop. If you can get into the habit of a before bed test, even a +2 that really helps to fill in some info.

I think I mentioned in a previous post that when they are recovering from DKA, it’s really a good idea to feed more often and 1 1/2 times more calories than they would usually eat. It may be that the suggestion from the vet to only feed breakfast, lunch and dinner isn’t working for Benny and it may not be enough calories. Dosing differently at am and pm can be problematic because it really doesn’t give the depot time to stabilize.
 
On the litter box topic, have you tried the Dr. Elsey’s cat attract litter? It seemed to work for us when we had a similar pee pad situation a few years ago. But ours was more just occasional going on the pads, so could be different things.
 
Hi @Christie & Maverick!

In the hospital, this dose has taken him to the 40’s. As far as I know, he has never run hypo with us at home, at least during the day. We will get into the habit of checking him one more time at +2 after dinner. He usually settles into bed right after he eats dinner so I feel bad waking him up for another test.

It was the suggestion of our vet we are seeing now to feed Benny a can and a half (of 5oz cans) per day split into 3 meals, no treats because of a possible GI issue that we will be looking into once Benny has had time to heal. Prior to this latest hospitalization, we were feeding him about 350 calories+ per day. I think the main worry for our vet right now is messing with a GI issue if we are feeding him so much. I do agree with you though in feeding him more because he is such a small guy. It is a hard balance right now!
 
Tim & Pookey said:
On the litter box topic, have you tried the Dr. Elsey’s cat attract litter? It seemed to work for us when we had a similar pee pad situation a few years ago. But ours was more just occasional going on the pads, so could be different things.
Click to expand...
I will take a look? Is it a scented litter? Benny is very much an unscented and sand-textured litter guy. 😊
 
Do you know if when Benny was at UPenn whether they were giving rapid acting insulin as well in order to manage his DKA? I appreciate it is currently a bit of a balance. I don’t think he’s going abnormally low, but as I said sometimes cats will bounce from steep drops or hitting numbers they aren’t used to. With his recurrent history of DKA, I don’t want to hold the dose unnecessarily long either.
 
Interesting reading on that last post. I couldn't read the first link either. Did the vet mention anything about white blood cells being elevated? That's often an indicator or infection.

For the litter box issue, if he's used to going on pee pads, have you tried lining a litter box with pee pads? So he at least gets back to going in the right spot. Or adding a second box near where he's going now? What are you using to clean the accident spots? You do need a good enzymatic cleaner or the smell will stick around and he'll associate it with the place to go. What litter did you used to use? Rather than try a new litter on him, Dr. Elsey's sells a container of the herbs in their litter, and you can sprinkle it on his previous litter. Here is a link to what it looks like.

Have you given him a new box lately? Older plastic boxes can retain smell and he might avoid for that reason. You can get a new plastic box or even metal ones are now available.

I agree with Christie on those night time tests before deciding on what his dose should be. It'd actually be better to do 0.75 units AM and PM instead of 1.0 AM and 0.5 PM. Make it much easier to see what's happening and where to go with the dose.

I also agree you need to feed him many small meals. A before bed meal with some food left out may help. You can pop a 50/50 mix of food and water into an ice cube tray and leave a foodsicle out if you don't have an autofeeder. I loved the autofeeder, it became Neko's source of attention instead of me.
 
Ugh, many sympathies on the peeing outside the box. When Gen was had his original diagnosis and DKA back in 2021, I belatedly discovered that he'd been finding places around my apartment for stealth peeing (while still also using his litterbox). One involved stored (folded up) cardboard boxes which had actually started to go moldy. 🤢 Another was the corner of a closet where all the hanging clothing had to be laundered repeatedly to get rid of the permeating smell. The cleanup in general was prolonged and unpleasant! Enzymatic cleaners definitely helped get him back on track (I used Nature's MIracle), as did making sure there were no handy clothing (or cardboard) piles in his reach for awhile.
 
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