Diabetic Luna is always hungry/poops on litter mat

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pevsfreedom

pevsfreedom

Member Since 2015
We've had Luna for about a year now and she went into remission once for a few months and 3 months ago popped back out of remission.

She eats 8.25 oz of wet food a day, so ~4oz each feeding. We have two other non diabetics who eat about the same amount of calories a day and are fine.

Luna is a fiend when it comes to food. She'll lick the floor if she thinks there is food, she'll eat anything and everything including plastic and rubber. She'll eat her meal and want MORE food, forever. She never stops wanting more food, and if I'm in the kitchen she howls for it.

She's on 1 unit of insulin 2x a day,

Questions:

1) Is this a diabetic thing? My vet had no answer (of course),

2) also, she poops the litter mats daily (right outside the box), she's not arthritic and has good movement/joints. She is declawed however (her previous owners, not me) and I've heard that can affect this? Is it a blood sugar thing? Vet also had no answer.

Thanks
 
Hi and welcome. :)

The searching for food in a diabetic is often down to one of two things - either her blood glucose isn't regulated yet so she's not able to use the food she's eating which of course will make her hungry all the time - unregulated diabetics are literally starving no matter how much they eat as they're not getting to use the food they eat. Or she's dropping low at certain points and is looking for food to help bring her glucose level back up. I'm not so sure on the eating plastic and rubber - I'm inclined to think that's a bad habit as we have 2 (of 6) cats here who will actively seek out plastic to eat (neither is the diabetic).

The pooping outside the box could have a number of causes. Blood glucose could be one of them, or she might associate the litterbox with discomfort if she's ever had an infection, constipation etc. She might have had a bad experience with the litterbox - if she's been scared or one of the other cats has swatted at her while she's using it, that might have put her off going in there. It could also be linked to her being declawed - I don't have any experience with declawed cats but I have heard that it can cause litterbox and other behavioral issues.
 
So in essence her blood level's basically aren't where they should be. I have noticed she stops the food freak-out thing about 2 hours after her insulin shots are given. By dinner time however she's crazy for food. We've had a very hard time getting blood samples to test, and haven't been doing it as often as we should.

Are there tricks to make the testing any easier? This poking her in the ear thing is just brutally hard, for us and her.

As far as the declawed litter thing I've heard her paws are unable to distinguish between the litter and the mat, and she might think she's using the litter. It's not bad just I'm curious why she does it. I should also mention she only does it when she's stressed around food time, she doesn't always do it.

And thank you
 
Interesting. She was overweight when we got her (14.2 if I remember right) and now she's at ~13.5, so she's lost a little but she needed to lose a little, otherwise she's been steady since starting this diet and dropping the initial pound (the shelter gave her all dried food and we switched her).

If we are feeding enough does it then equate to a blood sugar regulation thing and she's 'starving'?
 
That does sound as though she's running high a lot of the time rather than low then if she stops being so hungry as the insulin kicks in. It may be that she needs a dose adjustment, but I would be wary of adjusting her dose until you're having success with home testing.

Are you testing on her ear or her paw pad? Sometimes one is easier than the other - and sometimes a cat will object less to one than the other too! If you're testing her ear, it helps to warm the ear first - either with some rice in a sock that you can microwave to get it warm (though you do need to check it's not hot enough to hurt her each time) or with some warm water in a small bottle. Using a bigger gauge lancet (the alternate site use ones are good) will help with getting a big enough blood drop for a test too. My Rosa was tricky to test to begin with as it's difficult to see where you're aiming for on a furry black ear, so I used a fairly powerful flashlight or lamp to help me see where the blood vessels in the edge of her ear are - that can make it easier to aim for the right spot! :) And most of us here give a low carb treat (freeze dried chicken or similar) after testing so that the cat comes to associate the testing with something good and is more likely to sit still.

There is a link on here somewhere to testing tips that will give you more information - let me see if I can find it and link it for you. :)

We also get the occasional litter box "miss" here - with 6 cats, who knows which one it is or even if it's the same one each time. Like you, as long as they get the mat or the plastic the litter box sits on, we tend not to worry too much - life's too short to stress over everything! It is possible that without claws she really can't tell between the litter and the mat as she can't rake the litter like a cat with claws can.
 
We've used the ear-sock thing, we're just big wusses and stabbing her in the ear is hard. She's been over every time we test her. I'm guessing we need to up the dose to maybe 1.5 or 2 units, but I won't until we start testing her more. We use the ear every time, never tried paw. It's funny we actually use the same method you do, but we just wuss out quickly. I'll try to do better.

Thanks
 
And here's the link I was looking for - it helped me when I was starting off testing :)

http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/threads/hometesting-links-and-tips.287/#post-1665

It does sound like a blood sugar issue with Luna being so hungry, though if she's not losing weight now it's possible it's also become a bit of a habit for her to beg for food too.

I found testing really tough to begin with too - their ears just seem so delicate it seems like a mean thing to do. But apparently the edge of a cat's ear has very few nerve endings so they don't really feel it the way we think they will. I used to alternate between testing Rosa's ear and her paw pad on the days I had to do a lot of testing so she didn't get too sore, and because I felt horrible stabbing such a delicate looking ear every hour! The paw pad testing is pretty straightforward and is definitely worth a try if you're not comfortable testing on her ear too often.

If you're already getting successful tests some of the time you're doing really well already. The more practice you get the easier it gets - Luna's ears will learn to bleed (they grow extra capillaries when they're being tested regularly) so you'll find you get blood on the first attempt more often. And as you get quicker and more confident at getting it done, you'll find it does get less stressful too. :)
 
Thanks for your help. We've taken her to -FOUR- vet's, and not one has tried to do anything but use us as a potential cash cow, all advising against home testing telling us we're much better spending $75 a day bringing her in for blood monitoring.

I'm hoping her levels are normal and it's a behavioral thing, she gets kind of crazy for any type of food. She'll literally eat anything and everything. I find her snacking on olives that might fall off a plate, or cashews, anything! She's been like this since we got her. I'll look into testing her paws as well, thanks.
 
Ugh. So many vets seem to do exactly that. I was told home testing wasn't necessary and just to pay for a curve to be run every week (on a cat who gets stressed beyond belief on even a simple vet visit). The problem with having glucose testing done at the vet is that vet stress can raise the numbers by 100-200 points so basing dosing decisions on an artificially raised number could even be dangerous once the cat is at home and relaxed!

It does sound as though she has an appetite for unusual food for a cat. With some cats that's just their normal behavior, or if they've ever had to compete to get enough food that can cause them to look for food anywhere and everywhere too. Hopefully that's what's going on with Luna - if that's the case then maybe splitting her meals up into 4 or 6 mini meals instead of bigger meals twice a day might help her to know that there's food not too far away.
 
If weight is being maintained where you want then you are feeding enough. With better regulation of BG then less food should be required to maintain weight.
Some cats are just hungry all the time even if controlled.
 
I know what you mean and am glad Luna isn't 'as bad' as many other diabetic cases I hear about because the sheer $ involved gets astronomical, especially if you deal with a vet on a regular basis. Luna's sugar went up almost 200 points when we took her to the vet, so accurate readings would be impossible regardless. I'm thankful she's manageable.

The mini meals might be a good idea. I'll pay more attention to her behavior and test her more regularly to figure out what's going on, last thing I want for her is to literally be in pain from hunger, though my personal opinion is she's just a scrounge.
 
Larry and Kitties said:
If weight is being maintained where you want then you are feeding enough. With better regulation of BG then less food should be required to maintain weight.
Some cats are just hungry all the time even if controlled.
Click to expand...

Good to know, thanks. If her BG wasn't semi-regulated she would be LOSING or GAINING weight right?
 
Generally, yes, an unregulated cat will lose weight in spite of eating way more than usual. It does sound as though she's a very food-motivated cat - I doubt she's in any sort of pain from being hungry, but splitting the meals just might make her happier as she'd get to eat more often! Sometimes we have to be a bit sneaky to let the cat think they're getting what they want when actually they're getting the same as they were before! ;)

And I agree - Rosa, although expensive of course on diagnosis with the initial costs of insulin, blood work and buying testing supplies overall is a fairly straightforward case. It really does help to keep the costs down just a little when there's nothing else complicating things!! I'm sure once you're more confident with the home testing (and it really does sound like confidence is all you need at this point) you'll find you don't need many vet visits at all (if any) to keep her blood sugar under control.
 
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