Hello everyone,
I am a first time poster who came upon this site about 2 months ago. My girlfriend has an 18 year old diabetic cat, who had been insulin dependent for 3 years when I met them. After a debate one day about what kind of food to get him, I ran some google searches and the power of the internet brought me here. It opened a whole new world of ideas about his diabetes for me, as well as questions about his care history. He was prescribed 1 unit of lantus every 12 hours, and was being fed the dry DM food from purina. We often thought he was hyperglycemic because he was drinking and peeing very often, even at his presumed baseline (per veterinarian). This even led us to give him 1.5 units at times. Well, once we began to check him (never previously suggested to us), we found that his blood sugar was often as low as 30! He manifested very few classic hypo symptoms, and I can only shutter to think how long that was going on. We have now switched him to canned food and over the course of the last 2 months, his 18 year old pancreas has taken over full duty again. He doesn't need any insulin. He blood sugars run 80-120. We have been lucky that he has taken to the canned food very easily. Using binky's food list, he has settled into a routine of wellness or fancy feast brand cans. Those are easy for us to purchase in cases online or in local stores. I use a very cheap rite-aid brand true test glucose monitor and it works great. I would recommend this to anyone looking for food or glucometer recommendations, especially on a budget. He tolerates the ear stick very well, and is even purring now throughout the whole thing. As a side note, his sugar does run higher on fancy feast compared to the wellness brand foods, so I suspect that the FF numbers are less accurate and the wellness is lower in carbs, although FF keeps him in an acceptable range too. Of course, these are only the grain free wellness and classic/pate' style FF without gravy.
Anyway, I wanted to share Ling Ling's story as an example of another cat saved from the horrors of dry food and insulin dependency because of felinediabetes.com and everyone's hard work here. This has been a truly tremendous resource. We cannot thank you enough. Let this also be a testament to the fact that effective care of a diabetic cat need not be very expensive either. Of course, in our case, not needing to renew a lantus prescription every 3 months will save hundreds of dollars. Keep fighting the good fight everybody!
I am a first time poster who came upon this site about 2 months ago. My girlfriend has an 18 year old diabetic cat, who had been insulin dependent for 3 years when I met them. After a debate one day about what kind of food to get him, I ran some google searches and the power of the internet brought me here. It opened a whole new world of ideas about his diabetes for me, as well as questions about his care history. He was prescribed 1 unit of lantus every 12 hours, and was being fed the dry DM food from purina. We often thought he was hyperglycemic because he was drinking and peeing very often, even at his presumed baseline (per veterinarian). This even led us to give him 1.5 units at times. Well, once we began to check him (never previously suggested to us), we found that his blood sugar was often as low as 30! He manifested very few classic hypo symptoms, and I can only shutter to think how long that was going on. We have now switched him to canned food and over the course of the last 2 months, his 18 year old pancreas has taken over full duty again. He doesn't need any insulin. He blood sugars run 80-120. We have been lucky that he has taken to the canned food very easily. Using binky's food list, he has settled into a routine of wellness or fancy feast brand cans. Those are easy for us to purchase in cases online or in local stores. I use a very cheap rite-aid brand true test glucose monitor and it works great. I would recommend this to anyone looking for food or glucometer recommendations, especially on a budget. He tolerates the ear stick very well, and is even purring now throughout the whole thing. As a side note, his sugar does run higher on fancy feast compared to the wellness brand foods, so I suspect that the FF numbers are less accurate and the wellness is lower in carbs, although FF keeps him in an acceptable range too. Of course, these are only the grain free wellness and classic/pate' style FF without gravy.
Anyway, I wanted to share Ling Ling's story as an example of another cat saved from the horrors of dry food and insulin dependency because of felinediabetes.com and everyone's hard work here. This has been a truly tremendous resource. We cannot thank you enough. Let this also be a testament to the fact that effective care of a diabetic cat need not be very expensive either. Of course, in our case, not needing to renew a lantus prescription every 3 months will save hundreds of dollars. Keep fighting the good fight everybody!
