New member, March 11 2023-New Senior Cat Mom diagnosed with diabetes

Status
Not open for further replies.
T

Tinysunflower

Member Since 2023
Hi everyone,

i'm new to the group and want to say thank you for having this! My husband and I are proud pet parents to four cats. Our oldest, Tsuki, is a female spade European shorthair (black) and she is roughly 13.5 years old.

This kitty not only is the original gangster of our street- she scared all the cats from coming out but I truly believe she thinks she's a dog- she always has to join us when we walk the dog.

last week, I realized something was wrong when it was the cats dinner time and she didn't come join in the kitchen or react to her name called. She remained sleeping in her bed and when my husband came home, she seemed really weak, her green eyes seemed faded and we couldnt get her to eat. We had a suspicion something was wrong. We knew in January that she was borderline diabetic and didnt need insulin at that time but just the d/m wet food. Two hours later she only ate from our hands but became lethargic. We rushed her the next morning to the vet and was confirmed that she would need insulin.

We've been told to do gluclose readings for a month and she needs 1unit of insulin a day. I have noticed her skin is getting flaky and i'd like to give her some fish oil but i read conflicting reports being cautious about giving it to diabetic cats.

i'm also not a fan of this vet prescribed food as I genuinely don't feel it has nutrients in it. I know there are posts here with other wet foods to give but i'm scared to switch it when its just been a week of us giving her insulin. I'm worried the vet will lecture us if we feed her anything else....

can you please let me know what brand you're giving your kitty for their fur to be healthy? And any advice on when we can switch her to a better food?

our gluclose readings seem to be a bit all over the place- she started off strong at 5Mmol and then sometimes goes down to 3mmol. Will there be a time that the numbers are consistent...? I'm assuming a month of readings is to help determine her insulin dose but our vet hasn't really explained much to us.

thanks so much for this website and all of your help!
 
Hi and welcome to you and Tsuki to the forum.

Tinysunflower said:
We've been told to do glucose readings for a month and she needs 1unit of insulin a day.
Click to expand...
Can you tell us what type of insulin you are giving please?
Are you giving the insulin once or twice a day?
Are you testing every time before you give the dose to see it is safe to give the dose?

Tinysunflower said:
I have noticed her skin is getting flaky and i'd like to give her some fish oil but i read conflicting reports being cautious about giving it to diabetic cats.
Click to expand...
Diabetic cats can have fish oil as a supplement as part of the diet. If you are feeding a nutritionally complete food, there should be no need to give extra fish oil.
Unregulated diabetic cats often have flaky skin. It should improve over time.

Tinysunflower said:
We rushed her the next morning to the vet and was confirmed that she would need insulin.
Click to expand...
Did the vet mention ketones in the urine at diagnosis?

Tinysunflower said:
i'm also not a fan of this vet prescribed food as I genuinely don't feel it has nutrients in it. I know there are posts here with other wet foods to give but i'm scared to switch it when its just been a week of us giving her insulin. I'm worried the vet will lecture us if we feed her anything else....
can you please let me know what brand you're giving your kitty for their fur to be healthy? And any advice on when we can switch her to a better food?
Click to expand...
There is no need to feed a prescription diet to a diabetic cat. Is the food wet or dry prescription food?
Most of us feed either a raw diet or canned wet food with carbs less than 10%. If you tell me which country you live in I can give you a list of suitable foods. A lot of us feed Fancy Feast pates which are low carb.
Don't try and swap over to a lower carb diet until we can help you with it because you may need less insulin.
You don't have to tell the vet you have changed foods or you can say Tsuki wont eat the prescription food. He cant argue with that. You need to do what is best for your kitty...not what the vet thinks is best...when it is not suitable. Your story is a common one here when it comes to food.

Tinysunflower said:
our glucose readings seem to be a bit all over the place- she started off strong at 5Mmol and then sometimes goes down to 3mmol. Will there be a time that the numbers are consistent...? I'm assuming a month of readings is to help determine her insulin dose but our vet hasn't really explained much to us.
Click to expand...
It can take a few weeks to a several months for the glucose readings to be regulated. Every cat is different.
Are you saying you give the dose if the BG is 5mmol? and then it sometimes goes down to 3 mmol?
It is possible the 1 unit is too much insulin but we need to see some BG (blood glucose ) data.
Do you think you could set up our spreadsheet and add all the data you have please so we can see it?
HELP US HELP YOU has a link to the spreadsheet. If you have trouble setting it up we will help you. Just ask.
Also there is a link to the signature which tells us all about Tsuki which will appear at the bottom of all your posts (have a look at mine). Its in smaller writing and tell the helpers about Tsuki. We look at the signature and spreadsheet whenever we help you.
Also there is a link to the hypo kit...please make sure you have one set up asap.
Bron
 
Hi

Thanks for the great response! I'm in Brantford, Ontario, Canada. Last Friday when we took Tsuki to the vet, she tested her urine and said there urine was good- no stones present!

the wet food we are giving her is the D/M diabetic management wet food which the vet originally said we had to give her in January, when she said we could maybe delay giving insulin.

in terms of the dosage, we were told to give her 1 unit twice a day- we do it at 6am and 6pm. And we were instructed to test her sugar 5 hours after she eats- so ive been doing readings for her at 11am and then at 11pm.

we were told that if she doesnt eat not to give her, her shot until she does. So far we've had no issues with her eating, so we've been giving her the steady 2 units total a day. She's been on insulin for exactly one week today, and yesterday I noticed her levels were a bit low.

at the vet, they did xrays and my vet is concerned there might be something wrong with her stomach as it seemed quite enlarged near the small intestine. Our cat was in a lot of pain, she said, and didnt handle all the testing done that day that our vet said our focus right now is fixing her insulin and that she eats. Only when the vet is confident will she propose we do an ultrasound to see if theres anything else wrong as the probe apparently will be super painful and as at that time, Tsuki wasnt eating, the vet wasn't confident she could handle it. Apparently when we brought her in last week, the vet was worried she had DKA which is why she did the urine test which came back with good results showing that wasnt the case.

thank you for the advice about the food. The wet food she's on now is $70+ for 12 cans and we've been told to give 3/4 a can per feeding so we're going through it quite fast.

i just checked and she is on Lantus insulin.

i read a few posts about the flaky skin and it stablizing....i really feel we woke up one day and she went from 100 to -10 in a single moment. Im just trying to make sure I can give her the world and make her comfortable.

thank you for the signature, i'll read how to do that and how to do the template but i don't really understand the measurement unit used? Why is it not in mmol?

i did read the emergency toolbox and tmrw i will buy the fancy feast but i got everything else :) for the fancy feast "classic", which flavour is that? On petsmart's website none of the cans have that written on it
 
Oh sorry i asked my vet about raw food, she said our cat is too old to process the calcium in raw food at this stage so she didnt advise it
 
Lantus is a great insulin for cats.
I would recommend always testing before every dose to see that the BG is high enough to give the dose of insulin.
So the routine is to test/feed and the shoot in that order.
If the preshot BG is not high enough to shoot you can stall, don't feed and test again in 20 minutes to see if the BG is rising. and you can post and ask for help.
Try and always get a test in somewhere between +4 and +7 (both am and pm cycles) to see where the nadir or lowest point of the cycle is. This will tell you how low the dose is taking Tsuki.
Lantus dosing is based on the nadir not the preshot BGs.
If you can get the SS set up and data added we will be able to tell you if you need to reduce the dose of insulin.

Tinysunflower said:
i don't really understand the measurement unit used? Why is it not in mmol?
Click to expand...
The FDMB is a US based forum and the measurement used in the US is different to the rest of the world. So in Australia where I live, we use MMOL as well, but on the forum we all use the US measurement.
To find the US equivalent of a mmol BG you multiple by 18. So 5 mmol /L x 18 = 90mg/dL
To find the world equivalent of a US BG you divide by 18 So 200 mg/dL divided by 18 = 11.1 mmol/L
HOW TO USE A SPREADSHEET
If you install the world SS it will automatically convert to the US SS for you.
I am going to tag @Bandit's Mom to help you with the SS.
Ill also tag @Red & Rover (GA) as she lives in Canada and may have some tips for you.

Here is the CANADIAN FOODCHART
 
Tinysunflower said:
how to do the template but i don't really understand the measurement unit used? Why is it not in mmol?
Click to expand...
Tinysunflower said:
for the fancy feast "classic", which flavour is that? On petsmart's website none of the cans have that written on it
Click to expand...
Hi and welcome
It doesn't say classic on it in Canada
Just Fancy Feast Pate
We usually like to feed 6% carbs preferably less
There are many flavors
Chicken
Beef
Liver and Chicken
Liver and Beef
Turkey and Giblets
 
Last edited:
For your hypo kit

med and high carb wet food and some honey
Such as


Fancy Feast Gravy Lovers Gourmet Beef Feast in Grav
20% High Carbs

Fancy Feast Gravy Lovers Gourmet Chicken Feast in Gravy 15% Med Carbs

Fancy Feast Gravy Lovers Turkey Feast in Gravy 15% Med Carbs

Fancy Feast Gravy Lovers Chicken and Beef in Gravy 15% Med Carbs

First Mate Turkey 20%

Good idea to mark the cans with magic marker how many carbs

Or any on the Canadian Food Chart that Bron gave you above
Doesn't have to be Fancy Feast just an example about the med and high carb foods

You might even find some med and high carb food on this chart that you can find in Canada
https://felinediabetes.com/FDMB/threads/dr-pierson-new-food-chart.174147/
 
Last edited:
I definitely agree about reducing the dose to .5 units and to gather the testing data to see how low she is going each cycle.

Regarding syringes— I think what we want to know is: are you using U100 syringes? Those are the correct size syringes for dosing Lantus insulin. We have seen some very bad outcomes on this Board where people have used the wrong size syringes, so we like to double check.
 
Waving from the Kawarthas.

Tinysunflower said:
We rushed her the next morning to the vet and was confirmed that she would need insulin.
Click to expand...
Can you tell us what the numbers were when the vet confirmed the diagnosis?
I too am concerned that the dose is too high. Is it possible for you to set up the spreadsheet so experienced members can take a look? If you need help setting it up, there are a few spreadsheet gurus who can do it in seconds.

Are there or were there any underlying health problems? Teeth okay? Sometimes teeth can force glucose numbers up.

Tinysunflower said:
And any advice on when we can switch her to a better food?
Click to expand...
Just tell your vet that Tsuki has gone off the taste and don't settle for the d/m savoury selects which has 10% carbs and is too high.
Here is a link to the food chart where you will find the carb values of Fancy Feast, Friskies, and other brands (not all brands are available in Canada). Bron gave you the link to the Canadian-specific list.
 
To tag on to Suzanne's comment, you do not want to use the needle tips that you can buy with the Lantus pens. You want to use a U-100 3/10cc syringes with half unit markings.

If you want to do more reading, there are several sticky notes at the top of the Lantus forum. The notes will provide background on how Lantus works, dosing methods, etc. A warning -- there's a lot of information to absorb!

For what it's worth, there is a weight based formula for the initial dose of Lantus (initial dose = 0.25 x cat's ideal weight in kilograms). The dose usually lands in the neighborhood of 1.0u. The formula comes from the Tight Regulation Protocol. For the Start Low Go Slow method, we suggest a starting dose of 0.5u.

You are also correct. While the DM is in the low carb group (i.e., under 10% carbs), the ingredients are not the best. For what you're spending for a "prescription" diet, you can purchase far better quality low carb food. In addition, there is nothing prescriptive in the so-called diabetic diets. (The pet food manufacturers recently lost a class action suit in the US for calling their food "prescription.")

Do you happen to know if your vet ran any tests to diagnose pancreatitis? It tends to be a painful condition and you mentioned that your kitty appeared to be in pain. You could ask for either a Snap fPL or a Spec fPL. The Snap test is done in the office and it looks like a pregnancy test -- you get a + or - result. The Spec needs to be sent to a lab and your get a number result.
 
Hello, and waving at you from Canada's west coast. :)

With that painful stomach, is there any chance the vet did a blood test for pancreatitis? That pain plus not eating are possible signs. It not uncommon in diabetics. More about pancreatitis and treatment on this post: A Primer On Pancreatitis

Tinysunflower said:
i asked my vet about raw food, she said our cat is too old to process the calcium in raw food at this stage so she didnt advise it
Click to expand...
Not true, some vets are just opposed to feeding raw. You can get raw food that has eggshell calcium and ground bones in it, which might be easier to digest. When my girl was 15 years old, I told her internal medicine vet she was on raw food, and he said it was the best food she could be on. And she had a lot more going on at the time in addition to diabetes. We have lots of older cats here doing fine on raw.

I do agree with the others, Tsuki's insulin dose is too higher and needs to be lowered.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top