Newly rescued cat has diabetes & I'm new at this!

[susang777]

Hi, I rescue Abyssinians and just got one who was diagnosed last year with diabetes. I have his insulin and I'm pretty sure I was given the wrong syringes since they are the U-100 and I was told to give one unit twice a day by my vet who I took Mango to see as soon as I got him. Mango didn't need help, I did! LOL! So I'll be getting syringes where I can actually see the number, and something to measure the blood glucose to see what it is. He's nearly 8 years old and was diagnosed at 7 years old. It has already been helpful reading this forum, so thank you for the advice.
-Susan

 

[Barb & Mr. Frog]

You can use u100 needles with u40 insulin, it just has to be converted. When I joined the board, this chart was linked, and happily I saved the file because the website seems to be gone now, but here it is.

 

[Venita]

What makes you think you were given the wrong syringes? What insulin are you using?

Some of us do buy standing lighted magnifiers so that we can read the syringes.

 

[BJM]

Red cap or orange cap on the syringes?

red cap = U-40 syringe
orange cap = U-100 syringe

 

[Deb & Wink]

Most importantly, what does the vial or pen of insulin say the concentration is?

The best syringes for those tiny doses, are the 3/10 cc insulin syringes, made for children. You may have 0.5cc or 1cc or even 2cc insulin syringes. Those are much more difficult to use to measure the tiny doses our kitties need.

 

[susang777]

The syringe is 1ml. It's looking like he may be in remission just by diet change alone. I'll keep you updated. Thank you for your help and advice!
-Susan

 

[Deb & Wink]

Susan, that would be fantastici if this rescue kitty could be diet controlled so quickly!

Have you seen this food chart? Has most of the commercial wet cat foods available in the US and Canada. Third column of numbers lists the carb percent, and we suggest foods with <10% carbs. Thought this might be handy for you to have in the future, in case Mango gets picky about eating his current food.

Keeping our fingers crossed that the BG (blood glucose) numbers continue to look good.We consider numbers between 40-130 mg/dL to be normal range. It's the range in which my diet controlled diabetic sweetie Wink runs.

Please, keep us posted on how your pretty boy Mango is doing on this journey.