New member, first

First, thank you for allowing Jane and I to be a part of your community. My “handle” is Bella56 and I am Jane’s mother. She’s a 12 years old brown, black and greyish tabby. I found her in 2010. She was initially diagnosed about 4 years ago and the vet we saw - in an emergency situation - basically said she was diabetic, gave us insulin and syringes, and little instruction other than don’t shake the insulin bottle. Later that year, at our regular vet’s office, but not our vet, we were told she wasn’t diabetic anymore. We were ecstatic. Fast forward to Fall 2022 and she was rediagnosed at the first place that told us she was diabetic. So we started back up. Once our preferred vet came back out of early retirement, she questioned using Vetsulin. After our most recent health incident this past week, we’ve switched to ProZinc and I feel Jane is doing better after months of not being herself and weight loss. We also have had to incorporate Renal K into her diet which has been difficult since we live in a multi-cat household. We’re also struggling to monitor her glucose because she is a terrible patient, but now that I have found your group I’m hoping to find some help from those of you with similar challenges.

 

Hi and welcome to the forum.
Prozinc is a much better insulin for cats than vetsulin.
I will tag @Suzanne & Darcy as she is a prozinc user
Why do you need to feed Renal K?

 

Hi and welcome to the forum!

With a diabetic cat you need

• A low carb wet diet that is 10% carbs or under. Most of us use around 4-7% carbs
• A suitable insulin such as Lantus or Prozinc which are long acting, more gentle insulins than the old insulins.
• We recommend hometesting the blood glucose with a human meter…it is not necessary to use a pet meter which is expensive to run and is no better. It will keep your kitty safe and you will know how the dose is working for your kitty. Only testing every so often will not tell you what is happening in between those times and an awful lot can happen in even a day.
• HELP US HELP YOU has information about the spreadsheet, signature and hypo box which you will need to be able to look after your beloved kitty properly

FOOD CHART

This is an excellent site for diabetic cats…it has been around for more than 25 years and has very experienced people to help you.

Keep asking lots of questions.

 

Are you using 26 or 28 gauge lancets ?
Always aim for the sweet spot warm the ears up first, you can put rice in a sock and put it in the microwave, test it on the inside of your wrist to be sure it's not to hot, like you would test a babies bottle. You can fill a pill bottle with warm water and roll it on the ears also.Just keep rubbing the ears with your fingers to warm them up

6. As the ears get used to bleeding and grow more capilares, it gets easier to get the amount of blood you need on the first try. If he won’t stand still, you can get the blood onto a clean finger nail and test from there.
When you do get some blood you can try milking the ear.
Get you finger and gently push up toward the blood , more will appear
You will put the cotton round behind his ear up
case you poke your finger, after you are done testing you will fold the cotton round over his ear to stop the bleeding , press gently for about 20 seconds until it stops
Get 26 or 28 gauge lancets
Look at the lancet under a light, you will see one side is curved upward that's the side you want to poke with
A lot of us use the lancets to test freehand
I find it better to see where I'm aiming
You can also put a thin layer of vaseline on the ear ,to help the blood bead up


Have you tried offering some low carb snack like a little piece of boiled chicken to distract her while you test?
If you can get her to associate testing with a treat, that will help matters a lot.
I would try taking her to one spot, touching her ears and giving a treat, several times a day, to get her used to the concept. And use that spot to do all the testing.




As for treats when you test or give insulin
for treats for testing
You can give any freeze dried treats they are all low carb
Tap on this blue link and read post #64 the post numbers are to the right of each post and you can read about the freeze dried treats I listed

https://felinediabetes.com/FDMB/threads/new-to-this-i-need-advice.269452/#post-3007388

 

Welcome to FDMB!

Do you happen to know if the vets you've seen ever did a blood test (i.e., a fructosamine test) to determine if your cat is diabetic? It's the best way to determine the diagnosis. Cats can get stressed at the vet's office so an in office test may not be diagnostic.

If you're getting started with home testing, this link to our post on home testing should be helpful.

 

Thank you! Yes they did the blood test to first diagnose, then to say she was no longer diabetic and this last time to let us know she is diabetic once more. She gets so stressed at the vet and when we tried to do the glucose course it wasn’t very accurate because she was hissing, spitting and soiling herself. I thought I would try home testing because we’re trying to get the insulin dosage right. This is my fist diabetic cat but I’ve done everything from giving fluids, giving shots to syringe feeding for our other sweet cats, so I’m hopeful I can meet this challenge and help Miss Jane get in the right track.

 

Given how determined you are, I'm certain you will prevail!

I'd encourage you to take a look at Bron's post and work on getting your signature and spreadsheet set up. It truly does help us so we don't keep asking your the same questions about your cat and the spreadsheet will allow us, along with you, to see your cat's progress.