First time with a cat sitter

[Michelle & Dusty]

Hi all,

I'm about to leave my kitties with a house sitter for the first time since Dusty's diagnosis. This is a new house sitter for me. She'll be staying at my house while I'm gone, and will both test and dose Dusty. She's never treated a cat with diabetes but does have experience with old cats and has both pilled and syringe fed a cat. (I told her if she can syringe feed a cat she can *definitely* dose a cat.) She's going to come over soon to get practice testing Dusty's glucose levels and giving her an insulin injection.

My question: what information/advice should I give her?
- I'm going to give her a detailed list of how I do things, how I dose, test, feed (amount, adding water, etc).
- I've told her (and will tell her again tonight) not to dose Dusty if she's under 150 and to dose Dusty if she is between 200 and 150 only if she'll be at my house to watch Dusty. (Should I just have a no-dose if under 200 rule and call it good, since she's new to this?)
- I'm going to give her the hypo sheet and the DKA sheet from this site.
- I'll show her how to update the spreadsheet with Dusty's numbers.
- I'll show her where the hypo toolkit is
- I'll give her my vet's information as well as how to contact the vet after hours.

Any other information she should get? I feel like I'm missing important information.

ALSO: Dusty has been doing pretty well with the 2 units of Lantus...but I'm wondering whether I should reduce the dose just a wee bit (to 1.5?) to absolutely avoid any hypo scenario while the house sitter is here. I've already assured her (and will do so again tonight) that so long as she tests and doses only if Dusty is high enough, that Dusty is very (VERY) unlikely to hypo. That said, Dusty has definitely been reaching the greens with the new dose and I don't want her to panic about it.

Thanks for your help with this! It's so scary to leave Dusty in someone else's hands. I think I've got a 'first day at kindergarten' sort of worry going on.

 

[rhiannon and shadow (GA)]

You are thinking ahead.

I would add to make a demo syringe.... use colored water for her to compare to...
seems one of the biggest mistakes by other caretakers is second guessing themselves ( i guess) and giving the wrong amounts.


hopefully, she will also text you everytime she does test...

and my own opinion is to reduce the dose a bit as you said....
often kitties don't eat as well for other people... and that can definitely affect the numbers...

and maybe make sure the canned food are mostly her favorites...
if she's iffy on liking a flavor, she might not eat it for someone else....at least my cat won't....

 

[Hope + (((Baby)))GA]

Not to shoot if Dusty is not eating. Maybe take a syringe and use a permanent marker to mark where you pull insulin up and just leave it as a sample. Also remind her not shake or roll bottle and not to inject insulin back into the insulin vial/pen if she pulls too much up.

 

[BJM]

How about a dry run before you leave?
She can demonstrate and explain back to you what she understood you to say.
You'll have an opportunity to verify she understands.

 

[Michelle & Dusty]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone! She came over to my house this evening and ran through the process of testing and dosing. It was Dusty's normal dosing time, so I had her do everything on her own, with my just standing there talking her through it. So she successfully tested Dusty (collected the supplies, warmed the ear, etc) and got enough blood on the first try. She filled the needle by herself and, after talking her through the process of injecting, had her do it on Dusty. I was impressed -- she seemed really calm and capable and was great with soothing Dusty as she was going through the whole process.

I'm mostly hoping that Dusty cooperates and doesn't try to bolt when she's dosing her.

I'll leave very detailed instructions. And thanks for the suggestion about the empty needle with a marking -- I'll definitely do that as well! As well as to not dose if Dusty's not eating. I can't believe I forgot that initially!

And yes to all the instructions about how to treat Lantus. I went through several of them with her (inject the amount of air that you'll take out of Lantus, don't inject insulin in, keep it refrigerated) but will definitely put those down in the instruction sheet I'm typing up for her.

Thanks, too, about the suggestion for picking up food she loves. Dusty LOVES Fancy Feast, though I'll usually try to ensure she gets at least as much good quality food as the 'kitty crack'. I think I'll tell the house sitter, though, that if Dusty's not eating much to just go with an all FF diet while I'm gone.

You all are wonderful! Thanks so much for the suggestions!

 

[KPassa]

One more suggestion would be to have her text you Dusty's BG levels every time she tests as well as when she gives a shot. That way, you don't have to worry if she forgot or the numbers were too low and you also don't have to be disturbed by a phone call every time, either.

Not to scare you, but the first (and only) time I've been away since Mikey's diagnosis, everything became a literal disaster. Michelangelo's pre-shot numbers were all of a sudden super-low green so they had to skip shots, my brother's boss suffered a heart attack so my brother couldn't be the planned tester/shooter, and then my other backup got stuck working so two hours later, my brother's girfriend had to learn how to test and shoot just from watching me in the past and from googling a few youtube videos. The reason I tell you this is that the end result even with every worst case scenario happening, everything still worked out fine.

We all started learning how to do this ourselves at some point and we managed to make it this far. I try to think of surrogate testers in that light: they're me in the first week after Mikey's diagnosis; still wet behind the ears but capable enough to not fail. And that helps relieve some of the worry that is the worst part of leaving our kitties behind and trusting someone else to care for them. They won't be able to replace you, but they won't burn the house down, either.