Maria and Mouse
Member Since 2020
Hello! Mouse and I are excited to be joining this forum to get advice and hear about experiences others have had with feline diabetes! Mouse hasn't been part of our family very long, and with the unexpected diabetes and subsequent treatment, his behavior and health have been changing regularly, so I hope to use this forum to keep an eye out for which changes are normal and which we should watch out for.
My partner and I adopted Mouse in May to keep us company now that we're home all the time. His previous owner had passed away and didn't leave any vet records for him (in fact, the owner's sister thought Mouse was a girl). We fostered him for a month to determine if he was a good fit for us and got a clean bill of health from the vet in an initial check-up. They thought he was only about 2 years old, and that he was a bit underweight due to malnutrition. However, after months of feeding him several times a day, we realized he was actually losing weight, not gaining. The vet was booked a month out (due to COVID), so we set up an appointment, but he ended up having a ketoacidosis emergency a week before our appointment was scheduled, which is how we found out he's diabetic. So we got an surprise $2200 medical bill for a 2-night emergency stay, but luckily we caught it soon enough that he pulled through.
He's been getting twice-daily insulin since August, and his health has been improving. He went from 5.5lbs in August to 8.8lbs last week. But we've had to keep increasing the insulin dose (we're up to 6 units now) since his BG is still too high (we've been doing BG curves at home every few weeks, as recommended by our vet). The vet suspects there might be something else going on that's making his diabetes hard to control, possibly IBD or small cell lymphoma. The diagnostic tests are expensive (my partner and I are both graduate students living on just above minimum wage), so we're taking them one at a time as we're able and with an eye for his current health. Since his health and behavior has been changing so much with the increasing doses of insulin, though, it's hard to tell which changes are good signs, which might be signs of other problems, and which could still be normal developments since we've only had him 6 months. I'd love to hear about how other cats respond to new insulin treatment after being underweight!
Aside from his increased weight, Mouse has also gained more energy in the past month (around the time we got up to 4 or 5 units). He was never interested in playing for more than a few seconds for the first few months we had him, but now he initiates play on his own, which is great! He's been more affectionate and more likely to sleep in soft spots near us, while before he mostly slept on the hard floor or table. He always drinks and pees a lot.
The main thing I have questions about now is his eating habits. He was always desperate for food and ate everything in his bowl no matter what it was (so we gave him lots of small meals spread out through the day), and that didn't change after starting insulin, but in this past week, when we've gone up to 6 units, he suddenly is leaving food in his bowl and is getting picky. We've been giving him both dry and wet food, the DM varieties supplemented with Fancy Feast to reduce cost a bit and give him variety. This week he stopped wanting his DM wet food, though. He leaves most of it in the bowl unless we don't feed him anything else for several hours. He likes the Fancy Feast more, but still leaves some of that in the bowl as well. We're not sure if this is good (that he's not feeling like he's starving anymore) or bad (loss of appetite, not eating his prescription food). He throws up once every couple of days (sometimes his food, sometimes grass he eats while on walks, sometimes just stomach fluid), which we think could be a sign of IBD or something else, since he often has a gurgley stomach. So we're worried that he might stop eating if he feels sick and we don't realize, but it also might just be feeling less hungry because his treatment is working. We worry about everything! Does anyone have any experience with a case like this who could help us figure out whether we should be worried or not?
Thanks for reading my long post! I tried to offer plenty of background, and I do have more questions about other things, but I'm hoping to get feedback on his eating behavior this week. I'm sure Mouse would say thank you too, if he wasn't snoring contentedly next to my laptop right now! Thanks from both of us!
My partner and I adopted Mouse in May to keep us company now that we're home all the time. His previous owner had passed away and didn't leave any vet records for him (in fact, the owner's sister thought Mouse was a girl). We fostered him for a month to determine if he was a good fit for us and got a clean bill of health from the vet in an initial check-up. They thought he was only about 2 years old, and that he was a bit underweight due to malnutrition. However, after months of feeding him several times a day, we realized he was actually losing weight, not gaining. The vet was booked a month out (due to COVID), so we set up an appointment, but he ended up having a ketoacidosis emergency a week before our appointment was scheduled, which is how we found out he's diabetic. So we got an surprise $2200 medical bill for a 2-night emergency stay, but luckily we caught it soon enough that he pulled through.
He's been getting twice-daily insulin since August, and his health has been improving. He went from 5.5lbs in August to 8.8lbs last week. But we've had to keep increasing the insulin dose (we're up to 6 units now) since his BG is still too high (we've been doing BG curves at home every few weeks, as recommended by our vet). The vet suspects there might be something else going on that's making his diabetes hard to control, possibly IBD or small cell lymphoma. The diagnostic tests are expensive (my partner and I are both graduate students living on just above minimum wage), so we're taking them one at a time as we're able and with an eye for his current health. Since his health and behavior has been changing so much with the increasing doses of insulin, though, it's hard to tell which changes are good signs, which might be signs of other problems, and which could still be normal developments since we've only had him 6 months. I'd love to hear about how other cats respond to new insulin treatment after being underweight!
Aside from his increased weight, Mouse has also gained more energy in the past month (around the time we got up to 4 or 5 units). He was never interested in playing for more than a few seconds for the first few months we had him, but now he initiates play on his own, which is great! He's been more affectionate and more likely to sleep in soft spots near us, while before he mostly slept on the hard floor or table. He always drinks and pees a lot.
The main thing I have questions about now is his eating habits. He was always desperate for food and ate everything in his bowl no matter what it was (so we gave him lots of small meals spread out through the day), and that didn't change after starting insulin, but in this past week, when we've gone up to 6 units, he suddenly is leaving food in his bowl and is getting picky. We've been giving him both dry and wet food, the DM varieties supplemented with Fancy Feast to reduce cost a bit and give him variety. This week he stopped wanting his DM wet food, though. He leaves most of it in the bowl unless we don't feed him anything else for several hours. He likes the Fancy Feast more, but still leaves some of that in the bowl as well. We're not sure if this is good (that he's not feeling like he's starving anymore) or bad (loss of appetite, not eating his prescription food). He throws up once every couple of days (sometimes his food, sometimes grass he eats while on walks, sometimes just stomach fluid), which we think could be a sign of IBD or something else, since he often has a gurgley stomach. So we're worried that he might stop eating if he feels sick and we don't realize, but it also might just be feeling less hungry because his treatment is working. We worry about everything! Does anyone have any experience with a case like this who could help us figure out whether we should be worried or not?
Thanks for reading my long post! I tried to offer plenty of background, and I do have more questions about other things, but I'm hoping to get feedback on his eating behavior this week. I'm sure Mouse would say thank you too, if he wasn't snoring contentedly next to my laptop right now! Thanks from both of us!
