oreosmom said:
HOW DOES DIABETIC CAT CARE IMPACT YOUR LIFE? Questions like: Are you able to work out of the home, what is your daily cat-care schedule like? How much time is involved in caring for your cat? Do you feel like you are running a cat hospital? Do you get much sleep? Has it affected your social life...can you travel? Financial impact? etc.
1. how does it impact my life? in all honesty, i think it's kinda cool. it's amazing how many people don't know cats can be diabetic so when i am talking and i mention "my diabetic cat" or "my foster kitty" there is more often than not an immediate increase in their curiosity level so i get to educate people a little and hopefully, down the line somewhere, that education helps someone or some kitty. they often think "wow, so much trouble" but if they give me 5 minutes to say a few words about it they are often in awe.
and it has taught me soooooooooo much more about cats than i knew before. and i thought i knew alot before Mousie was diagnosed back in 2006
2. am i able to work out of the home? do you mean at home? if so, nope, haven't figured out how to obtain that luxury yet
if you mean away from home, yes. we are self employed and work 20 miles away from our home.
3. my cat care routine for the day? LOL! get ready for this. i get up, flip the switch on the coffee maker, get myself cleaned up and ready for work, grab a bunch of cans of cat food and mix up the various concoctions for the day (one gets his mixed with phosphorous binder, one is getting l-lysine in his right now, etc....). i grab a couple bags and start cleaning the litterboxes. take those out to the trash outside. go back in and start feedings with the non-diabetic associated kitties. go back to kitchen and draw up insulin for 2 diabetics, test and shoot them, log it in their notebooks. feed the diabetic associated kitties (those diabetic and those who eat with them). while they're eating i get our lunch ready and packed and fiance's breakfast ready to start cooking. by then a couple of the kitties who take oral meds are done eating and ready for their pills so i dole out the oral pills to my youngest kitty (2 1/2 yr old) and my oldest kitty (18 yrs old). check and fill all water bowls. yell at fiance it's time to get up and get ready. start cooking his breakfast as soon as i hear him stirring, get the coffee ready to go in the travel mugs. at this point i have about 15-20 minutes of free time to do anything i want or see that needs done like putting dishes away, sweeping, putting laundry away, getting on the internet, getting the mail, taking out trash, taking my medicine, etc..... when i hear the shower shut off i then get in the freezer and grab my bags of frozen kitty food of which i put 2 frozen cubes in each food dish around the house. put on my shoes and go over everything in my head to make sure i got it all done and off to work i go.
in the evenings, it's pretty much the same routine except i make dinner instead of lunch and do sub-q fluids..... get home, take off shoes, draw up insulin, test & shoot 2 diabetic kitties, feed everyone, clean litterboxes, do sub-q fluids on 2 of my kitties, give oral meds to the two kitties again, any little cleaning i see that needs done, pour a glass of wine, check out the internet for a few and then relax with the kitties.
that's my workweek schedule. weekends are a bit different, i.e. less stringent time schedules, more household chores and errands, etc.....
3. how much time is involved in my cat care? if you mean outside of the time spent giving them attention via playing, sleeping with them, brushing them, just sitting with them and holding them, i would say on a daily basis, the actual care (tests, shots, pills, fluids, boxes) takes me maybe an hour to an hour and a half. the playing, brushing, nail trimming, hair trimming, sleeping, etc....is not work to me. that stuff is joyful to me, relaxes me, and i wish i could do more of it most of the time
4. do i feel like i am running a cat hospital? sometimes. but not because of the diabetics. my diabetic has rarely ever needed more from me than my non-diabetic kitties as far as out of the norm care. in the nearly 6 years since she was diagnosed, she's had one urinary tract infection right after diagnosis, some chin acne once we had to deal with and an ear infection once that scared us some but other than that, she's been easy. i even took in a foster kitty for DCIN about 2 months ago so i'm treating 2 diabetics right now.
i have 2 diabetics in my house, 2 CRF kitties in my house, one of whom is also blind and has a perinephric cyst, 1 little kitty that was born with a heart of a dead man, a crippled middle aged lady kitty, and a kitty who suffered pretty severe brain trauma as a youngster that has made him just slightly "special". along with a handfull of perfectly healthy kitties. out of all of that the only time i feel like i'm running a cat hospital is when one is nearing the end of their lives as that requires round the clock care and me spending every moment i can with them before i lose them.
5. do i get much sleep? i get the same now at 41 years old as i have for the last 20 years since moving to california. probably actually a little more in the last year or so for whatever reason. to be honest though, i've always thought of sleeping and going to the bathroom as such a waste of soooooooo much time. i've always thought we waste 1/3 of our day if we sleep like they say we should. i don't want to sleep my life away.
6. has it impacted our social lives? in all honesty, no. it actually is helpful sometimes, i.e. we're tired and want to go home from whatever social thing we're at, i.e. weddings, dinners, birthday parties, etc....and you can always use the cat needs it's insulin as an excuse.
7. can we travel? if we wanted to badly enough we would but in all honesty, as we've gotten older, all that running around stuff has naturally left our systems it seems. anymore it just seems like work to go somewhere too far away and we work our butts off with our business so much so that if i could take a week's vacation, staying at home for a week would be good enough for me .
8. financial impact? the diabetes actually isn't that expensive for us. i will say i grew up poor so i naturally am always on the lookout for a way to save money. i get my lancets for free because our government is out of control and shoves testing supplies down our senior's throats it seems, syringes are cheap at walmart, and i peruse ebay for deals on test strips where i will pay no more than about 33% of regular retail price for them just because i know with diligence i can find them for that or less. i would say food is my biggest expense but that is not due to the diabetes so much as the number of kitties i have. my crf kitties over the years have cost WAAAAAAAAAY more than my diabetics but that illness to me is just like my grandparents getting older and sicker, a fact of life, and i'm not going to have these cats for 15+ years and dump them because their bodies are doing what they naturally do. i don't have human children, never planned to nor ever plan to, but to me, my cats are the same to me as human children are to many, only in alot of cases i could say i do a better job raising my cat kids than people do with their human kids
boy, i feel like i wrote a book. gonna have to read my own post to remember what i said
