Newly diagnosed

Hi,

My cat Finn has shown nearly all of the signs in the past 2-6 weeks and was diagnosed on Saturday. With insulin he appears quite tired, and from what I've read here maybe dosage is too high or diet changes are having a negative effect.

I'm in Toronto, Canada and would love if there is someone here from the East end, or Beach area that could help with in home testing, diet recommendations and a new vet.

I brought Finn home with insulin on Sunday, and had to ask a few times about food. I did but vet canned and dry, but would like to go the raw route.

I have two cats that eat both wet and dry. Both seem to have taken to the raw scraps with no issues. I'm most worried that The vet is prescribing a low insulin dose but is only giving half the story as they aren't leading me correctly with food.

Not too sure where to go from here.
Thank you in advance!
Angela

 

Welcome to the message board, the best place you never wanted to be.

There are 4 things you'll need to manage your kitty's diabetes:

- You - without your commitment, the following won't work.

- Home blood glucose monitoring with an inexpensive human glucometer such as the WalMart Relion Confirm or Target Up and Up (the pet ones will break your budget!). This keeps your cat safe and saves you the cost of going to the vet for curves and done regularly, removes the need for a fructosamine test. All of our insulin guidelines use human glucometer numbers for reference. We record them on a grid; instructions are here.

- Low carb over the counter canned or raw diet, such as many Friskies pates. See Cat Info for more info. If already on insulin, you must be home testing before changing the diet. Food changes should be gradual to avoid GI upsets - 20-25% different food each day until switched. There are 2 low carb, dry, over the counter foods in the US - Evo Cat and Kitten dry found at pet specialty stores and
Young Again 0 found online.

- A long-lasting insulin such as ProZinc, Lantus, BCP PZI, or Levemir. No insulin lasts 24 hours in the cat, so giving it every 12 hours is optimal for control.

 

All good suggestions, thank you. I am in Canada though - so will need to get Canadian info on pet food.

Also, my cats tend to eat only fish flavours. Would like to know more about how important it is to change flavours.

 

Welcome Angela and Finn! We have many Members from Canada that can help you with food selections. Post in Heath forum with your question and mention in the title that you are in Canada.
http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/forums/feline-health-the-main-forum.28/

 

Hello and welcome

 

Welcome Angela and Finn. So glad you found FDMB. You will find a treasure trove of information here and the hands on experience is worth it's weight in gold. I too am in Toronto. I'm in the west end but if you need some assistance learning to home test, I would be happy to help you out.

Perhaps your vet tried to sell you some prescription food and while the canned versions are fine they are very expensive and there are numerous good retail canned food options available. HERE is a link to some budget friendly Canadian food options put together by another Canadian member. Fancy Feast Pates are also a good choice. While the fish flavours aren't recommended as a steady diet, (worries over mercury content) if that's what it takes to keep Finn on a wet diet at the moment, I'd go with it and ditch the dry altogether. The dry food is too high in carbs and our options for low carb dry food in Canada are dismal. There is nothing under 10% and only a few under 20%.

I'm sure you will have more questions in the days to come. Post them on the HEALTH forum and you will get all the assistance you need/want.

 

Welcome Angela and Finn!

 

Thank you everyone for the great responses!

MrWorfMen's Mom, can I ask what vet you go to? I am looking up east end vets, but am curious.

Much appreciated,
Angela

 

My vet is in the west end.....Islington Village Animal Hospital. While I know that would be very inconvenient for you, I highly recommend them!

 

Angela, You might want to check out this site for vet options. Looks like there are few clinics getting high ratings in the east end although not sure how close to you they might be. I found my vet using this site, checking ratings and comments and then visiting the clinic sans cats. One of the members here put together a document to help interviewing vets HERE. Using those two resources hopefully will help you out. Personally, I think a vet who is willing to admit they don't know everything and is open to any and all questions and willing to work with you without being a dictator is of paramount importance especially with diabetes.

 

Super helpful! I have also started calling vet's near me. The one who was annoyed I was calling and wanting to meet first didn't feel like a good fit.

I have a blood curve booked for Mon with my current vet. Do you recommend one to start then monitor at home, or should I cancel and get to monitoring myself this weekend?

Thanks again
Angela

 

Personally, I think home monitoring is the better way to go because it will give you a more accurate picture of where Finn's BG is. I've seen far too many cats have their dose increased too much based on vet office test results which are quite often elevated due to stress. That said, since you are not testing yet, I'd probably do the one curve at the vet while you get the testing down to a fine art but keep any dose increases deemed necessary conservative at .25u t0.5u at the most. It's not hard to test and many of us have cats that come to us voluntarily for their tests (their internal clocks are remarkable!) but one key component is to be relaxed when you do it because these little furballs pick up on any angst we might be feeling. You don't want to be adding pressure to yourself feeling you have to get the testing down pat this weekend!

What kind of insulin is Finn on? At what dose?

 

I think it's Lantus - just 1 unit. I'll keep the vet appt since he's so calm.

I'm erring on being cautious and probably slightly under measuring the 1 unit.

Finn has gone to wet and raw food only and the issue I'm having now is that he's not really drinking water. It's getting harder to do the shots without him knowing. Any tips?

 

Glad to hear he's on a small dose of insulin. Removing kibble from the diet can lower BG dramatically. Cats on a wet/raw diet usually don't drink much water at all. They are getting the fluid they need from their food. It's the dry food that makes them drink water. Have you tried giving Finn his shot while he is eating? It's usually not the shot but the messing with their fur they don't like so shooting while their head is buried in their bowl often works. I give my girl half of her meal, draw up the insulin while she munches, give her the rest of her food and shoot while she chows down on the remainder.

 

Hi MrWorfMen's Mom - things have been going well here but today is the day I started monitoring at home. Finn is getting very low readings and of course it's the weekend so vets are closing soon.

In the vet office, Finn's readings through the day at 1 unit of insulin were well over 20. Once I arrived, he was anxious to leave and registered a 32 blood sugar reading. We went to 2 units a couple weeks ago, and no issues.

Today, before Finn ate, he registered 6.9 BS and right after 5.7 BS. I skipped insulin. I then tested 3 hours later and he's down to 4.3 BS.

I wondered what you have been told to consider as normal. At diagnosis, the vet advised 12 as a normal reading. Today, from the same clinic I'm told to administer insulin at 10 or higher. Obviously, I'm confused.

Would appreciate any advice you can share. Finn is his normal self - and has been with the insulin as well. My plan is to continue the curve today but would love some confidence in what I'm seeing.

Thanks in advance!
Angela

 

Hi Angela - 4.3 is within the normal range for a cat but you don't really want Finn going much lower. I would suggest starting a thread in the Lantus/Levimir forum and posting all your numbers because I think you are going to need some dosing advice later. The food switch will have brought down his levels and I think you are going to need to reduce the dose. I don't use Lantus so can't really advise much but it is a depot insulin so even though you skipped the shot he will still have some in his system. When you do post please say what meter you are using as that will help interpreting the numbers.

 

Hi Angela,

It looks like Finn may have had a very good result from the diet change and the insulin he's had so far but you made the right decision to not give insulin this morning. As you have seen, BG readings taken at the vet's office can be considerably different than those taken at home. I agree with Alexi that 4.3 is a good number but we really need to know what meter you are using to understand just how well he is doing. Using a pet meter a normal BG for a cat not on insulin would be 4.0 to 9.7 (IDEXX reference numbers) so I'm assuming that is the meter your vet is using and they are allowing an extra cushion up to a reading of 12 because insulin is being given. So if you are using a pet meter, the readings you got today would all be within normal limits. If you are using a human meter, it reads lower so while those numbers are encouraging, they wouldn't be quite as good.

 

Thank you both! I'll post on the other thread, but I'm using the alpha trak 2. I even brought it to the vet to calibrate it and it was within 0.2 of their meter. I'll do one more test at 7 before evening insulin, and post all those results. Vet has advised not to dose unless a reading of 12 or higher.

Angela