Uncontrolled diabetes, 1 year since diagnosis. Pancreatitis, vomiting and weight loss

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Sarah Fitzsimmons

Sarah Fitzsimmons

Member Since 2021
Hello fellow cat lovers,

I am hoping someone can give me some advice, my cat, Bullet, is 13 years old (this month) and was diagnosed with diabetes just over a year ago. He's a fairly big cat, was always weighing over 5kg, he was a bit chunking before he was diagnosed (probably the cause of it!) He now weighs around 4.3kg, he's got a boney back end and his thighs have lost so much muscle that they now dip inwards rather than being "meaty" like they used to be.

We have struggled to control his diabetes and seem to try many different things e.g a set dosage amount, change of foods, no biscuits, just chicken or fish, testing regularly and many more.

We now test his blood before ear meal so work out how much insulin to give him, sometimes we test him more so we can do a curve and see a trend.

For a few days/weeks we would have a steady rhythm and figure out how much insulin he needs based on his numbers and he would be like his old self again but then one day he would be sick multiple times, go off his food, not want any attention and would lay in a loaf position with an uncomfortable look on his face. He has ended up in the vets 2-3 times with the same symptoms of vomiting, diarrhea and weight loss. He would spend a couple of days in the vets, they would give him fluids and pain relief and he would be back to normal again. They diagnosed him with pancreatitis each time and would send him home with anti sickness, pain relief and digestive support food. After a couple of days he would be fine again but it seems to be a regular pattern every couple of months.

The latest visit to the vets was a couple of months ago, this time we ended up having an ultra sound to make sure there wasn't anything else going on and thankfully there wasn't. They again diagnosed him with pancreatitis, we were told to keep him on the digestive support food (brand name is Specific). They recommended we give him 200g a day which we did but he was so hungry, he would eat his food and then be begging for more, he wouldn't leave you alone until you fed him again. So we decided to increase the amount we gave him per meal, in the end he was having around 180g per meal, a lot I know but he seemed happier. Not long after we increased his food he would vomit almost every day, around 8-9 hours after he had eaten and would be a fluid/watery consistency but the colour of his food. There would be so much vomit, to the point you would think an adult human had been sick!

We then thought maybe we are over feeding him which is causing some sort of reflux as he would be sound asleep and then jump up to vomit.

We now feed him around 130g per meal and so far he has stopped vomiting.

I have a few questions and not expecting an answer for all of them but any advice is welcome:

How can we help him gain some weight? We are concerned that he is underweight for his size but we can't seem to put weight on him.
We can't give him biscuits (I bought diabetic cat biscuits but they make his blood sugar levels go through the roof so they are now just for emergencies when he is dropping too low.
He used to eat boiled chicken and fish which used to bulk him and increase his muscles but we were told to stop that as it's not helping his pancreatitis.

Can diabetic cats gain weight?

Have you managed to control your cats diabetes? If so, how?

What insulin do you use? We have Caninsulin and have considered trying an alternative.

Thank you in advance.
Sarah x
 
Welcome! We can definitely help.

Since you mentioned Caninsulin, I assume you're in the UK. Are you using a syringe for the insulin, or do you have the pen + needles?

If the digestive food is solely because of pancreatitis - that's outdated info. It used to be that a low fat diet was thought to help, but studies have since proven it does not matter. The best treatment for pancreatitis is a cocktail of pain meds (we use buprenorohine or gabapentin in the US), nausea meds (ondansetron), anti-emetic (Cerenia), and appetite stimulants (mirtazapine or cyproheptadine). If it's bad enough, you may need to syringe feed.

As for weight - yes they can absolutely gain weight it just takes a lot of calories. When they are unregulated, they cannot fully process the food they eat and need even more calories to maintain/gain. My cat ate about twice as much when he was unregulated in order to maintain his weight. Multiple smaller meals are easiest on the pancreas vs two big ones that a lot of vets seem to recommend.

So how's his appetite overall?

Here is a low carb food list for the UK:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1J5JpMe6TDXrHq_aTl9hUtHy6Gs9oRBqlz4nPGKxtySA/pubhtml

We define low carb as under 10%. So the Specific digestive food is higher than you want. Do not change the food yet as it can have large impact on BG

There is nothing wrong with homemade food either, just make sure he's getting the right vitamins and nutrients through meal completers, etc.

Now, are you home testing BG at all? Or ketones?
 
Hi,

I wanted to update my recent post as we found what was causing the symptoms. Bullet had an MRI scan where they found lumps on his intestines, one the size of a golf ball, it was cancer that was spreading fast. There was an option to have surgery to remove the lumps but as he was diabetic they advised against it as he might not survive the surgery or recover from it. As you can imagine this was a huge shock and we were devasted. We had to make the toughest decision of our lives which we weren't ready for, so we decided to take him home and spend some time with him, allowing him to do and eat the things he loved as he had spent over a year restricted due to his diabetes. He quickly stopped eating and grooming himself, he had already lost so much weight and was so boney. After a couple of days (19th June) we took him back to the vets and sadly said goodbye. It was the hardest thing we have ever done and would have done anything to keep him a little bit longer but we had to think about him and how he was feeling, he was a very poorly boy.

I am sharing this as we all read threads and don't always know how the story ended, so I hope my thread can help in some way.

If your cat has any symptoms like mine did, I beg you to do the scans and the tests you can, even just for peace of mind. It might not always be diabetes related which we naively thought.

Give your fur babies a big hug and a kiss, they are precious.

Love
Bullets Mum x
 
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