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So I got some (more) bad news today.
My kitty has been diagnosed with the feline version of Diabetes. I had noticed that she was eating and drinking a LOT more – every time I changed her litter box lately I’d notice how heavy the waste bags were getting, and although I had been trying to get her to shed some pounds with a new diet and more strict regimen on her food, I couldn’t help but notice her getting much thinner, much faster than expected. When she started going outside of her litter box, I brought her to the vet.
In about mid-May when I first started noticing this I brought her in. They weighed her (she weighed a little over 12 lbs), gave her antibiotics, and sent her on her way. She seemed to get better – she had been in the habit of urinating outside her box for about a week, which was the most concerning thing for me. I made sure that her boxes were in tip top shape, she took the medicine for a week, and things seemed to look up.
Then, on Friday, she defecated on the floor of the hallway. Both of her boxes were clean. I freaked out and brought her in first thing on Monday, and they kept her for most of the day trying to get a urine sample. She has been VERY difficult to get to pee!! I previously had tried to get a sample from her at home but the conditions of her litter box were not to her standards (no litter? No pee in the box!) so she found somewhere not quite as savory to let it out, and I gave up on being able to do it from home. Apparently, she was just as stubborn at the vet’s! After several hours of being there, I told them I’d like them to sample her blood, because I had read about Feline Diabetes and I was concerned that this was the reason behind her weight loss and her increased eating and drinking.
Unfortunately, I was right 🙁
I think the silver lining here is that I believe I caught it early. The doctor called me this evening to let me know that she had high enough blood sugar levels to assume she is diabetic, and I am going back in tomorrow (hopefully with a urine sample, but she’s again being very difficult to go where I want her to – they even gave me a special “litter like” pellet to put in her box that wont soak up the liquid, but she doesn’t want anything to do with it), and I’ll be getting her more antibiotics (her white blood cell count was apparently also not up to par) and some new food for her. She’s now down to 10.5 lbs.
The thing that upsets me the most about all this is that I feel responsible.
When I first got my girl, I brought her to a vet and recall being told that dry food was the best food to give my cat. I’ve lived with that knowledge for 9 years now, and I never thought any different. Come to find out, dry food is really NOT good for your cat. It holds significantly less water (which is necessary for urine tract health, and cats don’t necessarily drink water with their food, which in nature is the main way they even intake water), and has a lot of carbohydrates and plant proteins which are just not what cats should be getting.I feel responsible because I am convinced that my cat got diabetes because of the food I was feeding her. I should have researched, I should have known better, I should have not just listened to one person and blindly followed it. It hurts me to think about. I realize it’s not *really* my fault, but any of you animal owners out there surely know what I mean by this. I am responsible for her, and she got sick while I cared for her – I screwed up somewhere.
Anyway, when they measured her blood sugar levels yesterday they got a reading of 277, and then a little later they got a little over 300. If I am understanding correctly, this is the area that is RIGHT at the line of diabetic – my doctor assured me that some people don’t catch this until their cat’s glucose measures in the 600 range, and that is full blown, insulin necessary diabetes.
She is hopeful that we can regulate this with food and hopefully not have to get into the insulin. I am hopeful too – I also read that cats can RECOVER from diabetes (to a point – their pancreas can basically heal over time, but never again will she be able to have the same diet she has had for years) – and that is very good news. Still, I’m scared. And sad. And worried.
Here’s my Boo:
Way too interested in my Windstones for my comfort:
Eating the terrible dry food:
Pretending to be a Windstone:
Looking beautiful:
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And I’m sure that with the help of the vet, you’ll be able to get this under control.
I personally know one cat (my brother’s) who lived to the ripe old age of 17 even with diabetes.
Hang in there!
LIH, it’s tidbits like that which really help me keep my chin up – you’re now the third person today who has told me about a cat they know with diabetes and each of them have been much older than mine – thank you 🙂
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Please visit My Webpage to see my art and PYO's that I've done in the past!sorry to hear your kitty is feeling badly….
our boy had similar problems with Friskies which we had him on at the time…one day he kept trying to pee but couldn’t…we took him to the vet and turns out Friskies can cause crystals to form in the bladder especially with males….we caught it early and he’s on special food for the rest of his life but he’s happy and healthy now…
hope your kitty gets better soon!
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4. September Raffle Prize 2022 AHD Male GriffinIt really is quite treatable! Our fellow developed the full blown version and was on insulin injections twice a day. When we got him at eight months old he was already fourteen pounds in weight and we had a really difficult time keeping his weight in check. We took him to the vet straight away and they put him on a restricted diet, special food, the whole nine yards. He was on the best of foods, I think that stuff was costing us more a month than going out to dinner at a really nice resturant (of course he was absolutely worth it). He stayed on an excellent diet, we never took him off of what our vet recommended and still at the age of six we started to notice our boy was not acting like himself. He plummeted from eleven pounds down to eight despite us taking him to the vet repeatedly. They finally tested him and he was in the high 600 range, I about had a heart attack.
So we stated the run of insulin, first the atrificial kitty version and then onto the full blown human insulin. It wasn’t easy and it was a lot of both home testing and vet testing but we got it under control fairly quickly and he was the happy lug he had always been again. He lived until the rip old age of just shy of fifteen, almost ten years of being diabetic.
It is not your fault, though I understand perfectly what you mean. I think I cried for about a week straight everytime I looked at him because I felt like I failed him in some way. You can do everything right, and sometimes it just happens was what the vet told me. It is excellent you caught it so early and that the numbers were quite reasonable still. We ended up with our neighbors cat after she found out he was diabetic and was going to put him to sleep. We have had him a year now and his issues are fully controled by diet and checking his urine with strips at home. You just have to make sure they are the only cat using the litter box. The testing is a pain but they are worth every bit of it.
I wish you good luck with your kitty! Keep your chin up.
Daawwww poor kitty! Thank goodness you caught it early! It’s definitely not your fault about the food. The pet industry is constantly fooling their customers and pumping out all these cheap foods for the sake of money, when really they are note properly formulated to meet the dietary needs of each animal. (The primary culprit is corn, since until recently it has been very cheap to use). And different breeds might have different needs!
It’s the worst if you choose to have hamsters, mice, or rats. The dried corn in most of the food mixes they put out there tends to have bacteria in them that seriously promotes tumors (my sister has had multiple hamsters die of colon tumors as a result). The most ridiculous part is that they think the same food is balanced for all three! Mice and hamsters need more grains, but rats are omnivores! For my rattie boys I have to drive out to the one rodent adoption agency in the area to pick up Harland Teklan labs blocks, cause seriously those lab animals eat well!
Aside from my rodent rant, us pet owners have to get out there and encourage each other to do the research into what our pets really need, so that we aren’t fooled by the money focused pet food industry.
I hope everything goes well. I’m sure your kitty is gonna be just fine! A few adjustments, lots of love, and everything will be back on track.
All my love to you!
Thank you so much for all the well wishes and advice, everyone – it seriously made me mist up to hear encouragement from you all 🙂
I am feeling a bit better today. I went out and spent far too much money, but it’s all for her health so it hardly made me flinch – this is what savings are for, after all (at least until I can REALLY save)! I got both wet and dry food that is low in carbohydrates so that we can transition her first from the dry food she has been eating to the diabetic friendly dry food, and then eventually to the wet food only. It’s going to take some getting used to feeding her a few times a day, and I’m going to need the help of my family, but I think we can do it and things can only get better 🙂 I also did a lot of research into cat litter boxes and I ended up getting her new, open topped litter boxes and new unscented litter, and while I was setting everything up and mixing her foods and running around like crazy she just sat on my bed and yelled at me. I can only imagine what she was saying – “Why are you messing with my stuff?! I HEAR BAGS CRINKLING – GIVE ME TREATS!!” XD
I also did find her some treats that are 100% meat, and the only additions they have are vitamins 🙂 I OK’d them with the vet and Boo has already taken a shine to them – and they have the same crinkly bag that she knows, so that should be easy at least!
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Please visit My Webpage to see my art and PYO's that I've done in the past!Awwww, what an adorable kitty! 😀 It’s so wonderfully heartening to hear of another cat parent figuring out the diet connection and catching their cat’s problem early enough to try to head it off. Diet really plays hugely into health, like that saying ‘you are what you eat.’ Cats are desert carnivores which need moisture in the food because they don’t have the same urgent instinct to drink water as other animals do – in the wild they get it from the mouse they killed, or the vole or the bird that they caught.
I think the best, non-bias resource for learning about proper feline diet/taking care of kitties that I have found is here, if anyone is interested. They really promote wet food, cooked food and raw diet there -> http://www.littlebigcat.com/
I believe my cat Mama Kitty may have died from diabetes. Unfortunately, I couldn’t do anything to save her because I was in Vancouver at the time and I didn’t have finances or control over the situation – my parents did. Two years later, my BFF (Best Feline Forever) cat Sunny suffered a stroke – and again, because I was in Vancouver and he was here at home, I was powerless to help him. My parents had him euthanized and now all I have is memories, pictures, his dear faded purple collar that he had since he was a kitten which still has a few strands of his bright orange fur stuck to it and his little wooden box of ashes, which I want buried/put with my ashes with me when I die. Sunny was my best friend, so I will eternally regret the fact that I wasn’t there to help him and that I was not there as he died on the examination table. Because of his death and Mama Kitty’s, I’ve made a resolve to not let any future cats I have down. I’m determined that Smoky (Mama Kitty’s 16 year old daughter), Casper (2) and Copernicus (3) will all live to twenty or at least to their full, personal capacities. That’s my goal! I can’t afford to get off dry kibble at the moment (actually my parents are paying for it because I can’t) but I’m feeding my cats the best kibble that I can for my small dollar and doing my best to supplement their diets with wet food to make sure they get enough moisture, because you can NEVER trust a cat to get enough water from drinking even if you do see them doing it a lot. Like I said, these are desert animals – losing the instinct to drink and getting all of their liquid from their prey saved their skins in Africa, but it doesn’t do them much good when they’re being fed food that has no moisture.
Also – male cats are particularly prone to crystals and all dry food can cause them! (Crystals being chiefly caused by dehydration screwing up the urinary tract PH.) Try to feed only wet or raw, or if you must feed dry food because of finances (like me) do your best to supplement with wet. It’s the best preventive there is against a cat getting crystals! 🙂 (As well as many other life threatening problems of course.)
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Excellent!
She can recover, especially since she is borderline! Diet research will help you out the most, I think. Most people don’t realize just how important diet can be, for any animal, even humans. I had a friend make a full recovery from borderline diabetic just by switching her diet.
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My art: featherdust.comThanks again for the support, everyone! And Falcolf, I’m so sorry about your kitties 🙁 I have a great deal of respect for the fact that you are committed to give your animals the best possible care that you can, however! Thank you for sharing <3
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