Butterscotch's Pawrents
Member Since 2019
Butterscotch is a 14yr old female, likely Maine Coon mix. She began drinking excessive amounts of water, sleeping in her water bowl, begging for food, and becoming less interested in play time when she was misdiagnosed with chronic kidney disease in March 2019. We put her on a renal diet at that time and her health began to decline. Her symptoms were increased drinking/peeing, extremely lethargic, restless, not sleeping, hiding, not grooming, not meowing, begging for food but refusing to eat a variety of the tastiest things put in front of her, intermittent diarrhea. We brought her to a new vet at the beginning of Aug 2019. We were told she has normal older cat kidney's but nothing to worry about, some constriction in her lungs, abdominal bloating with an ileus, dehydration, weight loss/muscle loss, and diabetes. Her blood sugar was 440 and she had glucose in her urine but no ketones. We started her on 1 unit of lantus twice daily on Aug 8 as well as SubQ fluids. Getting her to eat anything was an extreme battle despite the fact that she was begging for food. Her blood sugars a week later were between 383-441 and Lantus was increased to 2 units twice daily on Aug 15. She is more alert and more willing to actually eat at this point. Her sugars are 334-402 on the 2 units. She eats very low carb Weruva and Tiki canned food twice daily. Still losing weight and drinking tons of water, diarrhea started again and had first pee accident next to her box.
We love our sweet Butterscotch so much and hope she isn't suffering while we try to improve her quality of life.
We have some spreadsheets at home and will start uploading data to our profile soon.
She did one glucose curve in the office last week. I've been testing her once a day at a different time over the last few days as practice and I'm doing my first curve (her second curve) at home today.
Biggest thing we're trying to figure out right now is which meter to use.
We like that the AT will only produce a result if it collected enough blood saving you from a false low reading but the strips are too expensive. I've read some about using freestyle lite strips in the AT but wondering how valid that is.
We were gifted a PetTest monitor but have no strips for it. The strips also seem expensive and only marginally cheaper than the AT strips. Biggest concern with it is I've read that it will give you a glucose reading even if the blood sample is too small and will result in a inaccurate low reading.
I initially liked the idea of a cheaper human meter for daily testing but I have anxiety and I fear that I will question every slightly low/high result and end up wanting to retest with a pet specific reader to confirm and thus wasting more strips.
Looking for a meter that uses 0.3uL blood sample because her ears don't consistently bleed well.
Other concerns include, new diarrhea today (she had diarrhea 2 weeks ago when first diagnosed and not eating well but all normal stools since then) and some pee outside her box today - she's never had an accident in the 11 yrs we've had her.
Losing weight but begging for food. She was a healthy 13lbs all her life (larger breed part Main Coon vet always said was a perfect weight) and lost 2lbs per her weigh in last week. Feeding 300cal per day per online research. She begs for food all day long. Not sure what to do. I understand if her sugars are over 300 she can't use the glucose from her food properly.
Eating has been better since we started rotating foods. Initially just prior to diagnosis she was acting super hungry/begging but no matter what we put in front of her she turned away and proceeded to beg for new food. Tried baby food, human tuna, bonito flakes, variety of cans, you name it and she didn't want it. She is still kinda doing this, begs and turns away from some foods or needs to be hand fed, but the problem is improving. She has not previously been a picky cat.
Thank you all for any advice.
We love our sweet Butterscotch so much and hope she isn't suffering while we try to improve her quality of life.
We have some spreadsheets at home and will start uploading data to our profile soon.
She did one glucose curve in the office last week. I've been testing her once a day at a different time over the last few days as practice and I'm doing my first curve (her second curve) at home today.
Biggest thing we're trying to figure out right now is which meter to use.
We like that the AT will only produce a result if it collected enough blood saving you from a false low reading but the strips are too expensive. I've read some about using freestyle lite strips in the AT but wondering how valid that is.
We were gifted a PetTest monitor but have no strips for it. The strips also seem expensive and only marginally cheaper than the AT strips. Biggest concern with it is I've read that it will give you a glucose reading even if the blood sample is too small and will result in a inaccurate low reading.
I initially liked the idea of a cheaper human meter for daily testing but I have anxiety and I fear that I will question every slightly low/high result and end up wanting to retest with a pet specific reader to confirm and thus wasting more strips.
Looking for a meter that uses 0.3uL blood sample because her ears don't consistently bleed well.
Other concerns include, new diarrhea today (she had diarrhea 2 weeks ago when first diagnosed and not eating well but all normal stools since then) and some pee outside her box today - she's never had an accident in the 11 yrs we've had her.
Losing weight but begging for food. She was a healthy 13lbs all her life (larger breed part Main Coon vet always said was a perfect weight) and lost 2lbs per her weigh in last week. Feeding 300cal per day per online research. She begs for food all day long. Not sure what to do. I understand if her sugars are over 300 she can't use the glucose from her food properly.
Eating has been better since we started rotating foods. Initially just prior to diagnosis she was acting super hungry/begging but no matter what we put in front of her she turned away and proceeded to beg for new food. Tried baby food, human tuna, bonito flakes, variety of cans, you name it and she didn't want it. She is still kinda doing this, begs and turns away from some foods or needs to be hand fed, but the problem is improving. She has not previously been a picky cat.
Thank you all for any advice.
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) and used it because I just couldn't keep up with the AT2 strip cost. My DH uses it too for daily BG testing as he is borderline diabetic. Currently testing Idjit again with the AT2 to use up strips before they expire. When we run out of Confirm strips, we are going to use the Prime meter for both DH and Idjit. The difference between a 0.3 m. and a 0.5 ml sample is not that much and the important thing is to be testing, to track those BG numbers, help prevent any hypo events and see how the insulin is working.
