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MooMobile

MooMobile

Member Since 2020
Hi everyone. I am so glad a resource like this exists because I am really overwhelmed with my cat's new diagnosis and am the type of person who really likes to learn as much as I can about issues so thank you all for being here. I've written a novel so I do apologize but writing things out makes me feel better about everything.

Anyway, our lil baby Moo was diagnosed with diabetes last weekend. Me and my husband took her to the emergency vet last Sunday for a suspected UTI which was confirmed and then treated but they also found she was experiencing glucosuria. They checked her blood and found elevated levels. I talked to our normal vet who wanted us to hold off on starting insulin until she could check her in a non-stressed state but unfortunately, everything is coming back as indicative of diabetes and we've been given the green light to start treating.

Prior to obvious symptoms from her UTI, Moo has always just been our silly lil Moo. She is not overweight (approx. 8.5lbs) and has been fine since we adopted her two years ago. In hindsight, however, it does appear that she may have been drinking excessively but we have another cat so it wasn't easy to tell who was doing what. I isolated Moo for 24hrs this week and found that she drank around 350ml of water in a 24hr period so that is her untreated baseline for liquid intake, a metric we can hopefully use to help gauge her progress.

So today, I got all our supplies but don't plan to begin her shots until Sunday where I will be home all day to monitor (my husband doesn't feel comfortable enough yet to do it alone). The plan is Lantus, 1 unit, twice daily until we can get her in at the vet again to have the Freestyle Libre attached. I am aware we would benefit from our own glucometer to do on the spot checks but for the initial in-home curves, this seemed like a good choice although I've read that not everyone has had good results. I also purchased a case of the Fancy Feast classic pate cans but don't plan to start that until after seeing the vet since we were instructed to start at 1 unit twice daily and from reading here, I've learned that if you switch to a low carb diet, the initial starting dose should be lower...so I'll wait to switch from kibble then.

I don't really know how to develop an intuition with how much insulin to increase/decrease and am hoping my vet can help to spell this out for me because right now I feel really overwhelmed and scared. I have so many fears and then start thinking about all the costs involved, especially since we travel and will need to board Moo...it's just so devastating. I am hoping we managed to discover this relatively early in her disease progression because she hasn't exhibited any major weightloss and am really hoping we can regulate her and get her into remission, especially since she's on the Lantus.

I'm currently experiencing information overload so am naturally feeling very anxious but would love to hear any tips you guys have for new parents of diabetic kitties.
 
Welcome. Lantus is a good insulin and testing BG at home like you are considering is done by most of us caretakers here. A human meter like the Walmart Relion Prime or Premiere is popular since the cost of test strips are very reasonable. The test strips for pet meters are very high. Most of use test before each shot and then sometimes between shots so that is why the cost of strips is important.

The Libre system is good but relitively expensive. I have used one on my Badger and two in my Wiggles.
 
Mindfulness breathing to take yourself away from the stress and overwhelmed feelings.

Deep breath, hold, release, deep breath, hold, release. Block out all other thoughts. Think about your breath only. If thoughts start to stray, stop those thoughts in their tracks, concentrate on your breath only.

Hi Moo! Looks from your photo that you were an ear tipped stray cat in the past. But now you have a loving home.

It's actually easier to switch the food BEFORE you start the insulin. But starting insulin dose would need to be lowered or perhaps start with a later date with the insulin. There are risks both ways.

Suggest you buy a backup human glucometer to the Libre CGM. Cats dislodge the Libre's and then you have no information on what is happening with your cat.

There are many conditions that can cause the glucosuria. (High glucose levels in the urine). Make sure your vet has ruled out other causes (diabetes, Hyper-T, kidney disease, steroid use, stress, heavy meal before testing, certain antibiotics, etc) before you start the insulin. 350 ml = 1.5 cups of water. Not a lot compared to my civie with suspected kidney disease.

https://www.americanveterinarian.com/news/when-glucosuria-in-cats-is-a-normal-finding
 
I second the recommendation to start the food change now instead of waiting.

Think of it like this....Diabetes is like a fire and by continuing to feed high carb food, it's like continuing to pour gasoline on that fire. Can you still put the fire out? Yes, but it's going to take a lot more water and time!

It makes a lot more sense to stop pouring gasoline on the fire in the first place!
 
Thank you all!

We will go ahead and start her on the wet food then and reduce her starting insulin dose until the vet instructs otherwise. Just to confirm - the recommendation is to start with 0.5 units twice a day, correct? I'm so afraid of "doing something wrong" and hurting her :(
 
MooMobile said:
Just to confirm - the recommendation is to start with 0.5 units twice a day, correct?
Click to expand...

If you haven't started insulin yet and there's no history of ketones, I'd wait to start for a few days. Get the diet change done and go ahead and get a human meter like the Relion Prime from WalMart so you can start learning to keep Moo safe. It's only $9 and the strips are only $17.88/100....a box of lancets to poke with is a few dollars (depending on brand....they are just pieces of plastic with a metal point so it really doesn't matter)

For about $20, you could prevent a lot of heartache. We have seen cats with tragic outcomes on the first shot....rarely but it has happened. If this were your child and their doctor told you to just give X units of insulin and come back in a month, they'd be guilty of malpractice. Shouldn't it be just as important for our furkids?
 
Hi and welcome to FDMB. You are already beginning with a great start caring for Moo's care. With the change to a low carb diet, a good insulin for cats and home testing, Moo should start feeling better soon.

I agree, start with the diet change immediately and I also recommend testing even before starting insulin. With the diet change and treatment for the UTI, her glucose levels could drop significantly. Before giving her first dose, you should test her glucose levels. It may be possible that you may need a smaller dose or, hopefully, no insulin.
 
Hi everyone!

I just wanted to give an update on our Moo because things went quite differently than I had originally anticipated!

Like everyone suggested, we switched Moo to exclusively Fancy Feast Classic Pate for food approximately 9-10 days ago, which she loves. We did NOT start insulin and around the same time as switching the diet, we had her Freestyle Libre monitor attached and have been monitoring her BG levels. She initially started ranging from 150-280 over the course of a day but has now had consistently under 200 scores, mostly in the 110-160s, occasionally peaking at 180, throughout the day. We still have another week to monitor before we need a new sensor for the monitoring system so we don't have a ton of trend data (and nothing prior to our hospital visit which was a 403 reading) but things SEEM to be trending downwards which is a positive sign! Our vet is considering her pre-diabetic and has suggested we not start insulin for now and to continue monitoring how the diet change is impacting her. If we need to start insulin, we're probably looking at half a unit twice daily but it really seems like we may have caught Moo's disease progression at JUST the right time to possibly prevent it from turning into a full blown problem. We still have a bottle of insulin and some syringes ready to go if we need to move in that direction but I am hoping we don't need to and that we just got very lucky with catching things randomly because of her UTI!
 
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