Dehydrated, fever, and high BG

[Rebecca & Jose]

Hi all,

This post is not about my Jose but about my neighbor's cat who was just diagnosed. He had initial BG levels in the mid 400s accompanied by dehydration and a fever of 104. The fever is now gone but he is still not drinking well. I found this interesting because as we all know it's usually the opposite for unregulated diabetic cats, excessive thirst. I'm curious if anyone has insight as to why this cat is not drinking water.

My neighbor has switched to all low carb canned food. He wants to wait off on giving insulin to see how the LC food does for a week. I will be going over tomorrow to test the cat to see where his numbers are at now. He was diagnosed on Monday.

Thanks!

 

[BJM]

If no fever and he's already switched to canned food, the cat may be OK. If still dehydrated, adding some water to the canned food may help with that.

See my signature link Secondary Monitoring Tools for descriptions of 2 ways - scruff test and gum test - to check for dehydration.

 

[Sue and Oliver (GA)]

Scared me, Rebecca. I thought Jose was having problems. I am glad you'll be testing him so you can see whether his levels are high enough to start insulin right away. I would really encourage the bean to get ketone tests too.

 

[Rebecca & Jose]

Nope not Jose! He's been great lately. I'll post an update on him this weekend sometime.

My neighbors car, Herbie, was tested for ketones at the vet on Monday and there were none in his urine. I was able to get over there to test today. He had already eaten about an hour prior to testing but his number was 245. He's getting fed canned science diet DM which I believe is only 3% carbs so his numbers have been dropping since his first vet visit.

To help with the not drinking I told my neighbor to mix water in with the food and it's been working. So that's good.

I want to go over again this weekend to get a test in before food to see how it is. At what pre meal number do you think he should use insulin? I offered to come over and show him how but he was still apprehensive.

 

[BJM]

Have you been able to establish about how much he drops with a given dose?
Ex Gracie will drop to the low hundreds from the upper 200s on about 1.2 units of ProZinc.