19th July 2021 - New Member - One cat, unmanaged diabetes after 8 months under vet, UK

[Catjazz]

Hi all. I have a 14 year old female tonkinese cat who was diagnosed with diabetes last October. Her symptoms were weight loss, urination and lots of water drinking.

She was put on prozinc and we bought an amtrak 2. I also started buying Royal Canin Diabetic cat food - both wet and dry to mix. I have been following the instructions on the side of the packet.

When we originally started looking after her (we adopted her at 5 years old) she had lost weight through stress and weighed about 4kg. She slowly put weight on with us and went up to around 4.5-5kg slowly over a number of years. She is a docile indoor cat and she often eats then sleeps and comes and finds you again in time for food or an evening of lap time.

After October her weight was below 4kg and I gave her the amounts on the side of the Royal Canin pack for a 4kg cat that needed to put weight on. Her blood glucose would be above 40 mmols (the amtrack just said "High" before her injection of 2 units of prozinc which brought it down again a bit, but sometimes not alot.

Over the last few months now I have tried my best to get the doses right or better as the vet hasn't offered any advice other than to say the prozinc should be working.

We have slowly given her more prozinc and have done many curves. I have also changed the amount of cat food we give her - most recently I have been giving her half of a 85g sachet of the wet cat food with 15g of the dry twice a day along with 5 units of prozinc. This is the amount for a 3kg cat that is the correct weight according to the packet. I have suspected that the dry royal canin might be causing some issues because once I tried to just give her the wet cat food instead (2.5 sachets spread over 2 meals) and her glucose went to 10mmols which is lower than I had ever seen it get which was a concern so we spoke to the vet and went back to the mix.

In a short period of time on this forum I can see there is alot of info about different cat foods. I have been told not to change the dosage of the prozinc unless you bring it in very slowly over a week at a time. I have not been advised by vets to get different food. I have been told my cat has unmanageable diabetes and they think it could possibly be a rare pituitary gland issue that would need experimental surgery but I don't think there is anything to back it up except the other stuff isn't working. The vet recommended we go to 5.5mmols then to 6mmols if that doesn't work. I tried 5.5 units at 8.20am and tested after 8 hours and it was 11.8mmols. At 7pm I tested and it was 25.3mmols. I didn't feel confident giving her 5.5mmols and leaving her to sleep overnight so I went back to 5mmols and gave her a little bit of the wet food just in case, pending what anyone says here.

I can get the right food and I can cover bills. I just need the good advice I am not getting currently if there is any out there.

Thanks all, I can do a full curve tomorrow. I am also open to buying the other blood glucose monitors if they are good, as the cost of the strips (£1 a strip) does put us off doing curves as often as we would like.

 

[StarburstMom]

I'm just learning this stuff BUT if you are noticing that her sugars are lower when you feed different food that seems to indicate that you could slowly adjust her food and lower her insulin. But you would need to be able to test her BG frequently and have a hypo kit available in case it lowers too much. I wonder if the more knowledgeable members of this group have suggestions on the best way to do that?
I am pretty sure though that the first suggestion will be to start a spreadsheet and attach it as a signature (there are stickys in the forums to go over how to make one if you aren't familiar with them) so that you can see how she is responding over time.
I would personally want to try adjusting diet to control the diabetes rather than experimental surgery.

 

[Bron and Sheba (GA)]

Hi and welcome to you and your kitty.
First of all, as mentioned by Maegan, setting up the spreadsheet and adding some data and also doing the signature would be a great help. We can then help you with dosing.
We often hear a cat has uncontrolled diabetes, but once we can get the food changed and a few other things tweaked, the numbers almost always come down.
HELP US HELP YOU has both the spreadsheet and signature links and the most important hypo kit link. Click on the blue writing

I think one of the main issues is the food you are feeding. The dry food is too high carb so you will struggle to get the BGs down feeding that.
I would suggest swapping over to one of the low carb (10% carbs or less) that are in the chart I am going to link for you. Canned or raw food is far better than dry not only for the carb content but also for the water content.
******this is important. When you start swapping over to a low carb diet, you are going to see a drop in the BGs. So you need to be testing frequently during this time and most likely reducing the dose will need to be reduced.
So first I would set up the SS and signature, buy some low carb foods, get the hypo kit set up if you don’t ready have one and then we can look at helping you start to swap over to a low carb diet.
I would not even think about surgery at this point. Yes there are some cats that are high dose kitties, but you need to swap over to the low carb first. This fact you saw a drop in the BGs when you fed the sachets indicates to me that a low carb diet will give you lower BGs.
I would also look at buying a human meter for the testing. They are much cheaper than the pet meter strips. And our dosing methods are based on the human meter.
I will give you a link to UK information that contains meters HERE

And HERE is the food chart
I hope this helps. Keep asking questions. We are happy to help you and your kitty.
Bron