Saphira - New Member 6/11/22

[Hannah and Saphira]

Hello! I’ve been lurking the past couple of days here, waiting for my cat’s official diagnosis, and decided to join today since we’re now officially part of the club.

My boyfriend and I’s cat’s name is Saphira and she’s a 14 year old Siamese.

About a month ago she started showing classic symptoms of diabetes (though I did not know that at the time), like excessive thirst, urination, and weight loss. We decided to take her to the vet about two weeks ago when we noticed blood in her urine on top of the aforementioned symptoms, and after a few tests the found that she had a UTI and high blood glucose levels, although everything else was perfectly healthy. They sent us home with a purina diabetic dry food and some antibiotics to treat the UTI. We went back on Thursday (6/9) to get her blood glucose reevaluated and it had not gone down since the previous visit, and thus she was diagnosed diabetic.

This morning (6/11) we went to the vets and were prescribed 2 units of Vetsulin twice a day, with Saphira receiving her first shot from the vet tech this morning. Luckily, the vets were very open to us that we are more than welcome to order the insulin from somewhere cheaper along with doing blood glucose monitoring at home if we’d like, though they did say they want her back in two weeks just to do a final check-in.

The vet tech also let us know that the vet is recommending we get her outfitted with a Freestyle Libre device, although we are a bit concerned about how pricey that may be, considering my boyfriend and I are both 25 years old and not super financially-stable at the moment. (especially considering that this whole process cost us around $500 we really didn’t have to spend)

My boyfriend will be giving her her second dose tonight at 10 PM and we are both quite nervous! Any advice or encouragement would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you all so much in advance!

 

[Sienne and Gabby (GA)]

Welcome to FDMB.

First, that's a very big starting dose of Vetsulin especially since you're not yet testing. This is a link to information about Vetsulin. To be honest, we recommend that you start with a dose of no more that 1.0u.

One of the other issues is that the diabetic dry food, despite it being diabetic food, is high in carbohydrates. There are only a handful of dry cat foods that are under 10% carb. Dry food is truly terrible for cats. It has limited moisture which makes it hard on the kidneys and given a cat's limited thirst drive, they need more moisture in their diet. In addition, cats are obligate carnivores. They can't digest the carbs in dry food. I'd encourage you to read the ingredients in the diabetic food. They are routinely awful. Many people here feed their cats Fancy Feast or Friskies pate style canned food. Those are far more diabetes friendly. This is a link to a website on feline nutrition and to a chart on the nutritional content of most canned foods. Low carb is under 10%, although most people here feed their cats around 5%. There are lots of choices on the chart and the foods cover a wide price range. Part of why I'm pointing this out is that Saphira's UTI may have pushed her into diabetes. The dry food didn't help. Often, the stress of an infection can trigger high blood glucose and as the infection clears up, numbers may come back down. If your cat was eating high carb food, the numbers may stay elevated. However, until you have a meter and are testing, I would not make a rapid switch to a low carb food. You could risk a hypoglycemic episode.

While some cats can do well on Vetsulin, it is not an insulin that the American Animal Hospital Assn recommends for cats. It was originally developed to treat diabetic dogs. A cat's metabolism is too fast for Vetsulin to keep blood glucose levels controlled for twice a day dosing. The insulins that are recommended are glargine (Lantus and its generics) and Prozinc. Lantus is pricey. However, the generics are less expensive and many people here buy their glargine from Canada.

The Libre can be costly. The sensor costs approximately $60 each (maybe more by now). There's no guarantee that the sensor will last 2 weeks. Many people use a human glucometer -- Walmart's Relion meter. The strips are inexpensive (about 17 cents each). It takes a bit of practice to get comfortable with home testing but it's easy to do and not that expensive.

Sorry to inundate you with information. Please let us know what questions you have.

 

[Hendrick Cuddleclaw]

Hi and welcome to the club, sorry to hear about Saphira's diagnosis. This is the best place you could possibly find to get her help! I love Siamese, I have lived with them my entire life. Saphira is beautiful! Need more pics


I am not one of the gurus, my boy Hendrick was diagnosed six months ago so I'm not able to offer much advice -- but I will say that personally I am a huge fan of Lantus. It helped my Hendrick so much. Very gentle insulin.

I'll see you around the forum!