Newly diagnosed, 12 yr old Maine Coon cat

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Talonstorm

Talonstorm

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Hi. My 12 yr old Maine Coon cat, Loki, was just diagnosed with diabetes. Loki has a history of health issues, mostly due to chronic upper respiratory infections. He has been tested for everything under the sun, even having his head scoped twice (looking for polyps). The vet feels that he had an infection as a kitten that went untreated which caused damage to his passages making him particularly susceptible to uri. Anyway, in addition to those issues, a year and a half ago he was diagnosed with chondrosarcoma in his right rear leg. The leg had to be amputated. He gets around pretty darn well on 3, but as you can imagine, he does not get the exercise he once did. He is a large cat anyway (Maine Coon Cats are big), but he gained 2-3 pounds bringing his current weight to 20 pounds. The vet thinks he should be closer to 16 or so.

Very recently (last month) we made a cross country move from PA to CA. I drove with my dogs and 2 other cats, Loki flew with my mom. Loki rides very poorly in the car, so I felt flying (in the cabin under the seat as a "carry on") would be less stressful for him than driving. He did well on the journey (as did my other animals) and adjusted well to being in a new home. Unfortunately, I noticed as soon as he arrived (2 weeks after my other kitties) that the litter box had some very large pee clumps. I also saw him drinking a lot (basically staking out a spot by the water dish most of the day).

Wednesday we went to the vet. His blood glucose was 425 and he was +3 for his urine. As strange as it sounds, I am relieved. Diabetes is treatable, it could have been worse. Anyway, the insulin I started him on today is Prozinc. He is getting 3 units twice daily.

So, I am hoping I can learn from the group a little on ways to adjust what we are currently doing.

Right now he eats Holistic Select dry food (the chicken kind). I have never fed canned food, so I am clueless about that. I am switching him over to Wellness Core dry food for now, but plan on easing into canned food in the near future. I don't even know how much canned food he should get, or how I can do this with 2 other cats in the house (plus a rotten little border terrier mix that sneaks into the cat room and eats their food every chance she gets). I read that a lot of you feed Friskies canned food, but I guess I always had the impression that Friskies wasn't a very high quality food. Another issue I see is that the cats are kind of used to grazing. In the past I fed them once per day, a set amount. If they ran out, they did not get fed until the next day at the same time. I am going to start splitting the ration now into twice a day to coorespond with Loki's insulin injection.

I do plan on starting to test him every day, I also need to do a blood glucose curve. I did this in the past for a diabetic dog we had, but it has been at least 10 years since then and the dog also had cushings on top of it, so things were different for him.

Sorry for rambling, I am just trying to figure out how I am going to tackle this. Loki is a super special cat, I'd do just about anything he needs to keep him healthy and happy.

Thanks, Tina

Loki030710sm.jpg
 
Holey moley that us a beautiful kitty you have there!!

Welcome to the group! It sounds like you are optimistic and upbeat- that's the perfect attitude to have for this journey! I'll just give some of the basics- I'm on my phone so linking articles takes forever!

Wet food (high protein, low carb) is the ideal diet for diabetic cats...actually for most cats. Friskies pate is low-quality. But it's cheap and low-carb. It works great for the budget-minded. So does fancy feast classics. There are many better brands out there, but you pay for them. Janet & Binky has a great reference food list for carb contents.

One thing that is worrisome is the dose. 3 units twice a day ("bid") is a very high starting dose. We recommend starting low (1 unit bid) and going slow. Once you gather some testing info, you gradually increase the dose as required. Many cata have gone into hypoglycemia on smaller doses than 3. Many vets feel that insulin should be dosed based on weight, but that is a dangerous assumption. Loki is a big guy, but that doesnt necessarily mean he needs a big dose!

I don't know what you mean that his urine was +3. Is that ketones?
 
I am very new, and use Lantus...so I can't help you there.

I do know you want to switch to wet food 100 percent of the time asap. I have a similar problem in which I have to free feed a second cat, so I free feed the prescription dry DM. I am working on getting the other one to eat wet food, and I finally got her to eat wet Wellness tonight (chicken and herring). I got it off of this chart: Janet and Binkey's food chart You are supposed to pick a wet food under 7% carbs.

I hope that helps. Oh, and the dry is a big no, no...so just know that! Good luck, and welcome. :smile:
 
Wanted to welcome you Tina, and you too Loki,
While new to the board, it is fortunate (maybe not the right word) that you are already familiar with diabetes, insulin and home testing.
As you know home testing is probably the best thing you can do for Loki (and for you) so that 's great!
I guess the best place for me to point you is to the information on food.
Dry food, being high in carbs, is something you'll want to wean Loki off of. Here are a couple links to lists of canned foods for you to look over.
What we recommend is an all-wet diet of low-carb food, and you should concentrate on anything on the lists that has a carb value under 10 (the lower the better). Many of us do use Friskees and Fancy Feast, but there are plenty of others that could be considered higher quality that should be readily available at a store like Petsmart if there are any in your location.
http://binkyspage.tripod.com/canfood.html
http://binkyspage.tripod.com/CanFoodOld.html

My sugarcat Bob eats FF Classic varieties. He was treated with PZI. You'll see that there are insulin support groups for each insulin type, and eventually you can post in the PZI forum and be able to more directly converse with members who are familiar with Loki's insulin.

Look over the food charts, and definitely start home testing as soon as you can. If you can get a picture of what the shots are doing for him over the course of a few days, then you can think about trying to get him moving towards a canned rather than dry food diet, which will also have a tremendously positive effect on his BG levels. You may find that the change to low-carb will enable you to drop his insulin doses significantly in a short time frame. The charts also include calories info, so you'll be able to determine how much food is the right amount.

This will be a lot of information tossed your way fairly quickly as others join the thread, but take a breath, there's all kinds of terrific people who will be very happy to help in any way they can.

Carl and Bob in SC
 
Tina,
One thing I didn't address (for a couple reasons) is the amount of insulin per dose your vet prescribed. While it is true that the recommendation is usually "start low, go slow", there may be specific reasons why your vet picked 3u BID to start. Do you know if he arrived at that dose for any specific reasons? Where there other things going on with his bloodwork besides the high blood glucose results?

If your kitty is eating dry food, he would consequently have a higher BG level for example. In order to control that, the dose would need to be higher. If all of a sudden you were to ditch the dry and feed on low-carb canned, then that dose might well be "too high" and may cause extremely large drops in BG levels very quickly, perhaps into "dangerous" ranges leading to hypoglycemia.

It's sort of a balancing act - trying to first home test to figure out what that dose does, say, in the next couple days while Loki is still eating mostly dry food. Once you have an idea of that, then as you convert him more towards canned food, you'll see from your tests that you might require less and less insulin.

If you were to just cut his dose now, without changing diet, his BG would likely go way up.

So, if your intention is to eventually get rid of the dry food, you will most likely see an indication in your daily BG tests that the insulin dose should be decreased. Lots of this going on inside Loki's body at the same time, which is why regular home testing is a must.

Carl
 
Thank you all so much for the advice. I got the glucometer today, so tonight was the first time I tested. Just before the insulin shot he was at 349. Should I be testing again after to see where he is at? I plan on doing a curve this weekend when I will be home all day.

In regards to his dose, I backed it off to 2 units twice a day. I know my vet said she was going to do some research before she recommended a dose, and then when I went to pick everything up, she recommended 3 units twice a day. She said everything else on his blood work was normal. I know she ran a lot of blood work, just that cost $170. I will ask her for a copy of it I think, my vet in PA always gave me a copy because she knew I liked to review it myself.

As for the food, I am about 50% changed over to Wellness Core dry food. I leave that down for them all the time. In addition, I am trying to get him to switch over to mostly canned food. I have tried several varieties so far including Innova (adult/kitten canned) and Holistic Select (turkey canned). He seems very interested in the canned, dives right in, but then only eats a few bites and walks away. I will be less nervous about that now that I can test his blood glucose level before the shot.

So, that is the update for now. On the up side, he seems to be feeling better and there seems to be fewer huge urine clumps in the litter box, so that is a good sign, right?
 
Yes on all counts.
The lessening of urine---great.
The idea to get a curve asap----great.
We really would love to see what is going on with the dose and the food etc etc.
and there is only one way...you got it, the kit.
So do a thing like this for us.
amps (am pre-shot) # and dose
+2 (hours) and #
+4 and #
+6
and +8
Then, pmps and # and dose.

will look like this for example

amps 370 2u
+2 348
+4 276
+6 199
+8 230
pmps 32 2u

ok? make sense?

Lori
Loved the pic of the kitties 'fighting' over the ice cream cone toy :lol:
 
Welcome Tina and of course extra sweet Loki,

First off Holy Cow! That is one handsome boy you have there, he needs to be a cat calendar model.

Now on to the other stuff, you have already gotten plenty of great advice on the whole diabetes issues, and I personally only have experience with Lantus, so can't help with any Prozinc questions...but..I can answer how much a big boy like Loki will need to eat of canned food, as I also have a big fellow that I believe has quite a bit of Maine Coon in his lineage. Don't know for sure as Maxwell was first a rescue from Hurricane Katrina, then his adopted mom got sick about the same time he got diabetes, she went into a nursing home and the family had scheduled to have Maxwell put to sleep, so I adopted him as a sugarcat from this board.

But Maxwell is a huge fellow, broad chested, long-legged and long backed, and has those tell-tale ear tuffs and long silky coat that makes me believe that at least one of his ancestors was Maine Coon, Maxwell weighs in at 17lbs and he eats about 1 1/2-2 (5.5 oz) cans of Friskies per day and is maintaining his weight just fine on that amount. I also have 11 other cats, one other fairly newly adopted diabetic Musette and 10 non-diabetics, everyone here eats exactly what my 2 diabetics eat, makes keeping the diabetic out of the dry food much easier and my non-diabetics are even looking and acting better than they ever have. They have some of the softest, sleekest coats around, my over-weight kids lost weight effortlessly, and my skinny minis bulked up. It took a little trial and error before I could find brands and flavors to everyone's liking, so you may have to play around with several brands and flavors until you find ones to Loki's liking.

As it so happens much to my dismay, mine all decided that they love the cheap stuff...sigh, I guess since they are all rescues off the streets, they are just a hamburger crowd and don't have the refined palate to enjoy the finer catfoods out there..lol.

Mel, Maxwell, Musette & The Fur Gang
 
This morning pre-shot his bg was 400. He ate the canned food a little better this morning, but tonight I am going to go out and buy one can each of several different brands and see what he likes best. On Saturday or Sunday I will do a full 12 hour (every 2 hours) bg curve.

I only had to poke him once to get blood this morning. He really bleeds fast when you hit the right spot, he doesn't like me holding it off to stop the bleeding after, need to get better at that. He isn't anywhere near as bad as the video I saw on youtube where the cat was growling and biting the lady. He just squirms a bit, lol.
 
Since he is bleeding so well at this early stage, I'm wondering if you are
hitting the vein.

Actually, you want to try for the half-way between the vein and the
edge of the ear.
 
I just want to welcome you to the board! Your Loki is a handsome boy! A friend of mine (well they are a couple really) had 2 maine coons and yep they are big! They live in Trooper - you meantioned you recently moved from PA?

Testing will be essential. And as far as the food goes, I used to feed Cedric 1/2 cup of dry per day plus 3 oz of fancy feast (all kinds). When he was diagnosed, I changed his canned and dry to Blue Buffalo Wilderness (plus some canned EVO and Wellness). By the time this group convinced me to ditch the dry, it was mid-may. Cedric's BGs dropped 100 points (he was pretty steady in the 200s) and 2 days later he was normal numbers. See the spreadsheet below. Note we used Lantus.

I now feed Cedric 4 small meals a day, usually from a 5.5 oz can of Wellness, Evo, BFF, and some other new brands that i have been finding at a local pet food specialty store. I feed him around 6am, then put out the Cat Mate C20 auto feeder with a refrigerated portion and a frozen portion from the night before. One side opens 4 hours after I set it and the other 8 hours (as per my settings, but you can do it up to 48 hours). This feeder has an ice pack for the bottom and has been working out great for me.

You might want to ask Mel about some tips for feeding multiple cats - she she has multiples! I only have Cedric, and the stray I have been feeding eats outside. good luck and welcome - you are already a step ahead by coming to this MB and site and exucating yourself!
 
I will try testing part way over, I am sure I am hitting the vein, he bleeds a lot. Anyway, he tested at 448 tonight, pre-shot. I gave him 3 units pro-zinc tonight. Is it possible that the insulin is doing nothing for him? He seems to be feeling better, and he is drinking and peeing less, but his blood glucose doesn't seem to be changing at all. I guess the curve I am going to do over the weekend will tell more. The only dry food down now is Wellness Core. He is getting canned Innova (not evo) before his insulin shots. This is frustrating!
 
Tina,
Although it might not seem to be doing anything, the insulin IS working on Loki. Hard to see with just 2 tests a day, but when you do the curve this weekend, you'll see how his BG goes down about 5-6 hours after the shot, and then starts to climb back up. And that is when you will start to see things start to make a bit more sense. This is a marathon, not a sprint. You will get frustrated (we all did) and don't let that get you down. Everybody says this, and every new person is told this - this DOES get easier. And it won't take forever before you realize "hey yeah, this isn't as bad as I thought a couple weeks ago..."
If he is:
Peeing less and drinking less
Eating more
Somewhat more active
Purring
Preening
Then that improvement is due to the insulin starting to work, and his appetite giving him some energy. And due to the fact that he's starting to eat food that's better for him. So there IS progress.
If your observation is that he seems to be feeling a little better, then he does. You, more than anyone, know YOUR cat. Trust what you see.

Also, bookmark this thread. In about 3 weeks, go back and read it again. That's when you'll know you're on your way.

You're doing super so far!
Carl in SC
 
This morning he was at 151, so I did not give him a shot. I think I know why he was lower this morning. My sister and my mom arrived last night for a visit, theya re staying a few days. Well, my mom mentioned this morning that the cats were bugging her during the night because Holly (my terrier, cat terrorist extrodinaire) got the dry food that was down. So, he didn't have any extra food after he ate some of the canned last night just before his shot.

I suspect he will be very high again tonight when I test him.

I tried a new canned food for him this morning, it was Merrick Surf and Turf. He seemed to like it, so maybe that one will work for us. I also picked up a few cans of the cowboy cookout flavor and a can of the friskies (one of the pate ones).

Loki is a fast learner. He saw me pick up the glucometer and knew that meant I would be opening a can of food for him shortly. He was very good for the test this morning, I think he sees it as a pre-cursor to some yummy food now, lol.
 
I think it might be time for some dosing lessons....if your ready.
You might find those on the PZI Insulin Support Group or ISG
Look for that under board indexx above on left side.

It is not ideal to dose 3 units one evening and nothing the next morning.
Unless of course you are in a hypo.
Your dosing should start coming together with a Spread sheet up for peeps to see, and some mid cycle tests.
We don't want him bouncing from high's to low's now, do we?
You will likely want to lower you dose in general and find that happy medium that you can shoot am and pm.
This will help get regulated....and perhaps...off the juice and diet controlled!
 
I just wanted to post an update on Loki.

I have switched him entirely over to canned food. I am feeding Merrick "Cowboy Cookout" and "Surf n Turf" varieties. He likes them both very much. Changing his food has had a big impact on his bg levels.

I can't get the spreadsheet to work with the browser at work, so I will try to cut and paste the values in. I did the bg curve on 8/14. The numbers were scary, his bg pretty much plumeted after the insulin (I did feed him extra canned food when I saw that). On the up side, over the last week, he has done great. I haven't even needed to give him much insulin. He is eating well, so I guess it is the change to canned food that is helping?

Here are his bg values since I started testing on 8/9/11:

08/09/11 349 (3u)
08/10/11 400 (3u) 448 (3u)
08/11/11 151 (NS) 413 (3u)
08/12/11 346 (3u) 208 (2u)
08/13/11 321 (3u) 203 (2u)
08/14/11 276 (3u) 101 56 77 165 249 243 (2u)
08/15/11 243 (2u) 185 (1u)
08/16/11 223 (2u) 197 (.5u)
08/17/11 187 (.5u) 176 (.5u)
08/18/11 269 (1u) 126 (NS)
08/19/11 156 (NS) 195 (NS)
08/20/11 221 (.5u) 136 (NS)
08/21/11 214 (.5u) 146 (NS)
08/22/11 134 (NS)

Since it isn't showing the formating, I had to alter it a bit. The first number is the AMPS, insulin doses are in ( ), then PMPS and dose in ( ). The BG curve is on 8/14/11, so the numbers listed are 2 hrs apart, all the others are 12 hours apart AMPS and PMPS.Any further suggestions would be appreciated. And you are all correct, this has gotten easier (although I find the canned food nauseating, lol). I have also gotten more conservative on the insulin doses, the original amounts recommended by the vet were indeed too high, especially now with the diet change.

Thanks, Tina (and Loki)
 
Hi. I'm just stopping by real quick to say that Loki is gorgeous!
I don't know that much about PZI, but those bg numbers look pretty good. Others with more experience with PZI will be along to help you. You're doing a great job, Tina.
 
Thanks Dyana. Maybe I will re-post this over in the PZI forum and see if anyone has specific advice for pro-zinc.

Tonight his BG was 119, so no shot again.

Is it possible that he could be controlled by diet alone so soon after diagnosis? I see other people have gone OTJ, but it seems like it took a while to get to that point.

Thanks, Tina
 
WOW! Loki is doing great!!! It is absolutely possible to have a diet-controlled diabetic cat, and (knock on wood, anti-jinx) it looks like you may well be on your way to exactly that! Now that you have a little more information, your "no shoot" number can start to creep down. The wonderful folks in PZ-land can help you figure out what that should be. I used prozinc for a while, but my brain has turned to mush and I'm not sure how to advise you on that issue :oops: It's possible that the .5u bid would be safe for both shots, with numbers over 100, but you may want to get a few more mid-cycle tests in. Around +6 or so (just not within 2 hours of food, or else you'll be seeing a food spike, not a true bg reading). But definitely cross-post this in the prozinc ISG and get some true expert opinions. But you are really doing a great job!
 
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