Jarvis is off to the vet

JarvisCat

JarvisCat

Member
We adopted two sphynx cats last week which seems to have irritated Jarvis stomach. He has dropped some weight, is lethargic, threw up some breakfast this morning after pooping, his runny stools have a little blood in them, and he’s not eating all of his wet food that he usually demolishes. Hopefully its nothing major.

I have been slowly reducing his insulin and am down to 3 units twice a day. I checked his BG levels earlier and it was 537. His numbers just don't seem to change and I am thinking he may be insulin resistant and idk what to do from here. Any suggestions are welcome !
 
His spreadsheet isn’t up to date so I can’t comment on his BG levels or his dose, although having had an insulin resistant cat myself (over 40 units dose due to acromegaly), I can understand how it feels. Has he ever been on a lower dose? You said you had been reducing his dose? Was that based on him dropping too low in his BG?

The most important thing right now is to get him checked by your vet. They need to do bloodwork and look for signs of infection, check his electrolytes and test for the presence of ketones. I am worried about the possibility of DKA. The things like vomiting, lethargy, etc. are concerning. With Jarvis’ BG being so high much of the time, you should be regularly testing Jarvis for ketones with either the urine strips or a blood ketone meter (I used a NovaMax Plus.)
 
And about the insulin resistance. If he has been unresponsive to insulin for a long time ( he’s been diabetic for years now) I would highly recommend having your vet test Jarvis for Acromegaly and Insulin Autoantibodies. These are blood tests that are run at the Michigan State University Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory. Those are two not so uncommon conditions that can cause insulin resistance in cats. It’s the second and third tests on this list (IGF-1 and IAA)

https://vdl.msu.edu/Bin/Catalog.exe
 
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Suzanne & Darcy said:
How is Jarvis today?
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I will be picking him up from the vet today. He stayed over the weekend while we had to go out of town because they were concerned. They have done xrays and blood tests. So far his blood tests look great and so did the xrays. They said they wanted to do one more xray this afternoon to double check his GI because he had a lot of stool in his body when they did the first xray so they just want to double check they aren't missing anything. They also started him on the Purina DM wet food and said his stools are starting to get better.

I began reducing his insulin to see how he responded from being on 7 units. He started on half a unit when he was first diagnosed and then as he would get checked they kept increasing it. A lot of folks were mentioning 7 units was high for a cat and with his BG levels still being high I wanted to see if maybe a lower dose would be better. I have never seen his BG lower than the 300's. I plan to post an update once I ask some questions and get more answers.
 
Well, my cat went up to a high of over 40 (yes over forty) units at one point. Of course, he had acromegaly (that’s the IGF-1 test I mentioned above.)

If you started at .5units and if his dose was increased gradually then I do not suspect he is being overdosed. If so, he would have dropped too low at some point. I’m sorry his BG is not responding well to the insulin.

@Diane Tyler's Mom GA what is the carb content of the Purina DM food?

Good news that Jarvis is doing better and coming home!
 
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