Holiday dose - advice needed

C

Carys'n'Moira

Member Since 2025
Hi there. My partner and I are going away tomorrow morning for 3 days. Moira will be going to a cattery for the first time. Unfortunately this is our only option to ensure she gets her insulin.

The cattery won't be testing her before giving shots. We have been on 1.5u for about 10 days and have been getting some nice numbers the last few days. I'm not sure what dose to ask them to give. 1.5u feels too high. 1u she is quite grumpy. 1.25 is harder to dose and a bit more vague. She is a very nervous girl and I'm worried about how she will eat with us gone. Can anyone please advise?
 
It looks like a reduction to 1 is too much but you are right that 1.25 is more difficult to draw. Did you decide on 1 unit? I see that on her spreadsheet.
 
I would lower to 1 myself since you don’t know how Moira will react once in the cattery.
I always lowered more when I left my girls w a sitter that didn’t test.
 
@Lisa and little @Suzanne & Darcy

Thank you both for replying 🙂 we did decide to go with 1u after. Sorry for the delay in replying - went camping and my phone internet was very poor. All went okay at the cattery but she was a bit sporadic with her food intake as I suspected she would be. The cattery owner did his best looking after her and coaxing food into her, but did have to skip one dose and give a slightly reduced dose another day. It's been quite warm here over the weekend which doesn't help matters either.

Unfortunately when we got her back home last night she was acting quite off. When I tested her for PMPS her ketones were pretty high - higher than they've ever been at 1.8/1.5. It was quite a struggle to get her to eat but finally managed it an hour after shot time with some new food mixed in with cheese. Was nearly about to take her to the emergency vet but did a midcycle before bed and saw that ketones were 0.6 so decided to reassess this morning. they were slightly lower at 1.3 and thankfully she does seem more like her usual self so will continue to monitor that carefully at home.

Thankfully my partner and I have no further trips planned at present so she doesn't have to endure a cattery again. Think we will have to go back to the drawing board the next time we go away.

In terms of her dosing, do you think we should just go back to her normal 1.5u straight away? I just held 1u last night and this morning as she was being iffy with her food. She is eating with a bit more vigour now though so don't want to hold an insufficient dose, especially with the ketones
 
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As long as you can monitor her cycle, I would go right back up to her previous dose because she’s too high and is now producing ketones. You can manage her BG with food and carbs if she should drop below 50, but I don’t anticipate that happening anyway.
 
Suzanne & Darcy said:
As long as you can monitor her cycle, I would go right back up to her previous dose because she’s too high and is now producing ketones. You can manage her BG with food and carbs if she should drop below 50, but I don’t anticipate that happening anyway.
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Thanks Suzanne. I'll do that this evening providing she eats her meal as she should 🙂
 
I hope she will be feeling a lot more happy and calm today and this evening! That cattery really threw her off (it sounds like they really tried though.)
 
Suzanne & Darcy said:
I hope she will be feeling a lot more happy and calm today and this evening! That cattery really threw her off (it sounds like they really tried though.)
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Oh absolutely. I've never used a cattery before but the owners were really really lovely people. Moira is just such a shy timid little thing. Her fear overrides everything unfortunately, even her will to eat which is certainly not ideal! Ketones were 0.4 at amps this morning and she's back to eating as normal so thankfully going to 1.5u seems to have been the right call
 
Carys'n'Moira said:
Oh absolutely. I've never used a cattery before but the owners were really really lovely people. Moira is just such a shy timid little thing. Her fear overrides everything unfortunately, even her will to eat which is certainly not ideal! Ketones were 0.4 at amps this morning and she's back to eating as normal so thankfully going to 1.5u seems to have been the right call
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Yes. The insulin will help keep the ketones away — that and a good amount of food! :cat:
 
Hello Carys! I was just checking in on Moira and I am really happy to see some longer strings of blue there on the 1.5 unit dose. It looks like she is doing a bit of bouncing from the blue numbers but she isn’t staying high very long. I believe the red PMPS tonight of 405 is a reaction to those blues today. I see she already had come down some from there 4 hours later. She needs some more time to adjust to the lower numbers. I am looking forward to seeing even better numbers soon! After we give her a bit more time, we will see if she needs another .25 unit increase. She is making progress Is she back to being herself now?
 
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