NEWBIE! 4 KatKids, 1 Diabetic, Hello Folks!!!

[Bruce in North Dakota]

THANK YOU EVER SO MUCH FOR BEING HERE! Late last night, our newly-diagnosed kitty Angelina started acting weird - lethargic, stumbling, weak, and I realized she was having some kind of distress related to her condition.

As always, when I need to find info FAST I went to them-there "internets" and looked in some of the "tubes" for some answers, and ran across this superb resource. After typing in the term "Emergency" into the forum search tool, I ran across no end of good advice for immediate actions. A quick dropper-full or three of some maple syrup/water concoction and she was up and running in no time!

The Kat is a 4 year-old Siamese Mix (ala' Alley Cat) who has had some pretty serious health problems of late. She started out as just the sweetest little kitten, hand-raised by little Hutterite children, and we were hoping to breed her in her 2nd year because of her outstanding personality traits and extra toes (a "Steinbeck" Kat). All attempts to breed her failed, and her personality changed to that of a grumpy, snarling old man shortly thereafter.

A few trips tp the Vet yielded no solution, until he opened her up a year ago to spay her, and found a major problem in her reproductive tract that defied early detection. He removed all the problematic plumbing and she seemed to get a bit better, but our sweet kitty seemed gone forever.

She most recently developed this weird problem of acting quite discomforted, and licking licking licking her haunches, and skittering about after doing so. The Vet ran (another) "Blood Panel" and diagnosed her as diabetic, and prescribed Glipizide in a transdermal creme solution.

It was AMAZING! Within three or four days of rubbing a tiny bit of the creme twice daily into her ear, we had our "Sweet Kitty" back, sweeter than ever! She felt about 10,000% better from all indications, and even looked forward to the little rubber finger-glove "snap" sound when I put it on, and welcomed the application of the creme.

Not knowing much about feline diabetes, and the degree of control and regulation actually needed to maintain purrfect health in her, I managed to miss an application one evening, and figured it might be a great idea to play catch-up the next moring with the application of say maybe just 50% more of the creme. She seemed just fine, and we continued with the normal dosage and times for another day, no problemo.

The second day (yesterday), however, she started "hiding", camping out in the closet for the entire day. When I finally found her outside of it, I just happened to notice her gait was a bit addled, and she seemed a bit "drunk".

I figure I screwed up pretty royal with the 150% dose, now that I have learned so much here. I immediately gave he the maple syrup/water solution in an eyedropper, and she rebounded in about 30 seconds. Amazing.

We also pulled all the different kat-phoods lying around for the other kitties, and encouraged her to eat the Purina DM (?) the Vet prescribed for her, so she only has access to it. She is eating and drinking water (nice, clean reverse-osmosis water) but does seem to be drinking a bit more than usual.

Today, I have withheld her morning dose, and will probably withhold her evening dose also. She seemed a bit clumsy again this morning, so I gave her a single dropper of the syrup/water, encouraged to phood, and she seems fine if not just a bit lethargic.

Tommorrow, we will travel the 60 miles with her to the Vet and seek a re-appraisal of our treatment options and the medication dosages. I am also searching around for the blood-testing kit online, and still reading as much as my wife lets me get away with while I should be doing other things.

So I have THREE questions, along with this intorduction:

1) Any "Quick Advice" or comments you, the reader, wish to share?

2) Can the other 3 Kats eat the Purina DM kat phood without ill effects, or do I need to segregate the kat-phood-stuffs?

3) What brand tester is generally percieved as being the best?

Thank you in advanced for your comments and advices, and a SERIOUS "Thank You!" for being there in the form of this forum for answering the "Emergency" questions that presented us last night.

~Bruce & Evelyn. Kat Parents of Angelina, Itchy Brother, Sam and Sally

 

[Hillary & Maui (GA)]

Hi -

Let me start with I don't know anything about the glip cream and how this works for cats. What I do know about glip is pills and that is not good to give to cats. Generally speaking cats need injectable insulin and the cats on this board are on one of several kinds of injectable insulin.

But if this cream works similar to injectable insulin - then giving more, because you missed a dose is dangerous and never recommended. As you saw, it sounds like your cat may have had a hypo situation and while the sugar brought her up quickly, it doesn't have enough staying power to keep her up as food does.

Don't beat yourself up over this mistake, what's important is that you recognized something was wrong and did something to help her.

Here is a link about hypo and building your tool kit:

Hypoglycemic Shock


There are several types of insulin available. Many people, myself included use Lantus or Levimer both of which are great insulins. They are gentle insulin and given twice (BID) per day in 12 hour increments. Or you could also choose PZI or the new version called Prozinc.

Please read up on the insulins available, here is a link to the Insulin Support Groups:

Insulin Support Groups


Regarding food: here is my pat response to that:

Dump the dry food (if you are feeding any) and the DM. ALL cats, and especially those with diabetes, do best on a species appropriate diet that is high in protein and low in carbs. Dry food DOES NOT fit that bill and DM food, even canned, just really isn't that great as far as quality. Most here on FDMB feed low carb/high protein canned, raw bought from a pet store or they make there own.

Here great links, one is to a food chart put together by one of our board members that breaks down the carb % and protein % of most of the commercial brand foods. You want to keep the carb % below 10% and around 7% is great. The other link is to a site by a vet "Dr. Lisa DVM" ... who also posts on this board from time to time ... there is in-depth info. there about many things, including nutrition and how to make raw food.

Nutrition/food info

The good thing with feeding your diabetic cat this way, is that it is ALSO good for any non-diabetic cat too. All your cats can safely eat the same food without worry and it may save you some costs and headaches of having to do separate feedings and keeping track of what they are eating.

One more thing to keep in mind when changing food:

If you are feeding dry food or even a high carb food, BEFORE removing these foods, please make sure of your insulin dose as it will most likely need to be reduced, so as to avoid a possible hypoglycemic situation due to the removal of the dry/high carb foods that will lower the BG’s and reduce the amount of insulin required. Again, another reason why home testing is important.

Kudos to you for wanting to learn to home test: you can pick up any meter from the pharmacy - however, if you want something inexpensive, Walmart sells Relion brand - the meter and strips are reasonably priced and the meter works well.

Personally, I use the One Touch Ultra and Mini. The strips are a bit more pricey, but I like how both these meters work. If I were to go shopping for a new meter, I would check out the Relion meters.

 

[Gia and Quirk]

Hi Bruce, good to see you.

I don't have any short form advice for you because you need to learn the basics about feline diabetes and its treatment so you can figure out what questions you need answered.

Please start by reading our FAQs for an overview of the subject, then read wwwcatinfo.org for the information you need about feline nutrition and diabetes and look at both the pet diabetes wiki and the insulin support groups fora to learn about insulin. I can tell you that if Angelina were my cat I would not use glipizide, I'd be choosing an insulin instead.

The only question I can answer authoritatively is that all your cats should be on the same species appropriate diet and that the so-called 'prescription' diets are not an answer, they're made with poor ingredients and you can do better.

There are many newly diagnosed threads on the board and I know that a lot of your questions (those you didn't know you wanted to ask--lol--) will be answered in those threads.

 

[Sheila & Beau GA & Jeddie GA]

Welcome Bruce and Angelina! Kudos for recognizing something was wrong!

A lot of us here have multiple cats (I have 5, two are diabetics - one on insulin and one diet controlled) and we feed them all the same for the most part. I feed Friskies and Fancy Feast low carb, pate-type foods. They are both as good or better than the DM in terms of ingredients - and cheaper! But the DM is a lower carb food than Angelica may have been getting and we often see cats that are diagnosed diabetic become diet controlled when the food is changed to lower carb. What that means is that if the cat is on insulin, the dose needs to be decreased as needed, based on testing, and then stopped. The same would happen with the glipazide.

So testing is the key and you want to be able to test at home so you have an immediate answer to where her blood glucose (BG) level is, especially if you think she is in a hypo situation. FYI, you are the second person here in a week with a glip induced hypo - it seems. ANY human meter will work, but the Relion is the cheapest for strips bought in a retail outfit. You can sometimes fine strips for other meters on ebay for less. I have a True Track Smart System meter ("store" brand at CVS, Walmart, Albetsons, etc) and get strips online for $15/50.

My "advice" is to get a meter asap and learn to home test her. Even if she become diet controlled you want to monitor her occasionally at home (vet obtained BG numbers are often high from stress). Also, get all your cats on a low carb, wet food or raw diet to keep her diet controlled and the others from developing diabetes. And read and ask questions!

 

[Melanie and Smokey]

Welcome to FDMB land from another North Dakotan!

I am a newbie around here so I offer no advice other than feeding DM to all my kitties I found out one thing - it stains the carpets a lot worse and they eventually came to refuse to eat it. I mix a little in with Fancy Feast every now and then but I earn some pretty annoyed not-buyin-it glares.

You will find some wonderful advice around here, glad it helped you get your girl out of hypo. I ended up here because I was soo scared of hypoing my girl that I wasn't getting any sleep and she was getting quite sick of me waking her up every hour to see if she'd act drunk. Don't we all act drunk when we're half asleep?? My Smokey is now working her way towards leaving those insulin shots behind with the help of this great board.

 

[JJ & Gwyn [GA]]

First off, please get a glucometer and learn how to home-test your cat's blood sugar levels. Without readings, it's impossible to know whether your cat's blood sugar levels are too low, too high, or having wild swings through rebound http://petdiabetes.wikia.com/wiki/Rebound.

I suspect Kat may be experiencing rebound, but there's simply no way to verify that without a blood sugar curve. If Kat continues to experience rebound, then she will probably have a hypoglycemic event. Or, if her blood sugar levels are too low, she may already be having hypos.

It's important to note that, at least with insulin, a cat is generally overly sensitive to insulin for a couple of days afterward and should be given a reduced dose of insulin. I'm not sure whether the same thing applies to glipizide.


Are you testing for ketones? Ketones are a potential side effect of unregulated / under-regulated diabetes, and one of the possible symptoms is lethargy, which you note that Kat is currently experiencing http://petdiabetes.wikia.com/wiki/Ketones. Ketones are one of those problems which, if they occur, can turn very bad very quickly. And, while low levels of ketones may be treatable at home, high levels of ketones may require hospitalisation at a 24-hour care facility. While you're trying to get Kat's diabetes under control, it's best that you monitor for ketones.

Monitoring for ketones is done through ketostix, which you should be able to pick up in the diabetes section of most pharmacies. Some areas apparently keep them behind the counter; I've always found them in the aisle. You dip the stick in fresh urine, and it changes colour if ketones are present.


You should know that fair number of cats can get into remission -- that's where your cat's diabetes is controlled through diet alone, and it's the best status, health-wise, for both you and your cat (and your pocketbook). To have the best shot at remission, you need to switch to a low-carb diet, provide support to the pancreas and preserve the ability of the pancreas to produce insulin, and get any other health conditions treated. 'Other health conditions' include any problems which may cause pain, infection, or inflammation, all of which can raise blood sugar levels. That includes even 'minor' things like tartar build-up on the teeth.

Regarding supporting the pancreas and preserving it's ability to produce insulin: while it's possible, I myself am unaware of any cats who have gone into remission while on glipizide. I would suggest that you at least consider switching from glipizide to insulin, which should give you a better chance to get into remission. Many folks here are not in favor of glipizide, as it can actually destroy the pancreas, turning your cat into a permanently insulin-dependent diabetic.


Is the vet 60 miles away your best option? Where are you located (nearest city is fine); it's possible that someone might be able to recommend a different vet for you.