Hello hello!

My little monster Yoshi is newly diagnosed as of 2 days ago! He was losing weight and drinking water like it was going out of style. As a type 1 diabetic myself, I recognized the signs, so got him to the vet asap. His blood sugar was 381, which seems WAY high to me, but the vet assured me that's actually not too bad. No other issues going on, so its just a straight up case of lazy pancreas! He's started on one unit of the vetsulin (sorry, can't remember the actual name, but I know its not the levemir) twice a day for this weekend and then Monday or Tuesday he'll spend the day at the vet so they can check his sugar every two hours and we'll go from there. I am very suspicious of the UrinarySO food that he was on for a couple years due to cystitis. He and his sister (and actually the stray cat who just showed up at the door the other day) are all on Blue Buffalo wet food now. I'm on the lookout for a good quality wet food that doesn't have potatoes or carrots or other things like that in it.
So anyways, I pretty much know the drill for him, gave him his shot this morning, wish the needles were shorter though, yikes! But I'm going to read through these forums this weekend and just refamiliarize myself with things, make sure I don't have anymore questions for the vet next week. Hi all!

 

Welcome! You have a great advantage in understanding diabetes, so you are ahead of the game. Most people coming here have to learn all the diabetes basics. You'll find lots of good info here. And the Main Health Forum is a tremendous place to ask for advice.

 

Welcome. 381 is high but typical for a newly diagnosed cat. Here’s a list of wet foods and their carb contents. Pick foods under 10 carb (7 and below is better). Most of us feed fancy feast classic or Friskies pate foods.

 

Good morning and welcome!

as the dosing adjustments done differently for different type of insulin so it is important to establish which one you are using. Maybe check your label and add the insulin name/current dose to your signature section? If indeed it is vetsulin than you might want to review THIS vetsulin info. If it is other let us know.
The "traffic" is by far better on the Main Health Forum,so as Debby posted - ask anything over there, you'll get more eyes on your post.
HERE is the link to the Main Forum.

 

Callie was diagnosed in early September. She too was drinking water like crazy and the litter box was soaked. My vet told me absolutely no dry food and to feed her fancy feast classic and Friskies pate.Callie takes PRotamine zinc, two units twice a day. My local pet store had a product called vital cat it's a freeze dried food. It comes in different flavors and they told me it would be good for a diabetic cat. I use this in place of dry food. It is a little pricey but she does not eat a lot of it at one time so it's not too bad. Good luck to you and your kitty

 

Welcome

Vetsulin is an insulin that is used for animal only. However, it was developed for dogs and does not work good for most cats.
You mentioned Levemir. That insulin is used by many caretakers for diabetic cats. My three insulin-dependent diabetic cats are on Levemir and doing great. If you are using Levemir yourself I would discuss with your vet using Levemir Yoshi

 

Hi, welcome !!

You are up to a great start, congratulations.

This is a link to the list most of us use, you should look for one that is high protein and 10% or less carbs, that your kittie likes and that suits you, I would recommend that you check the values for Blue Buffalo since even though they are grain free a lot of their varieties have gravy so they are high in carbs

http://catinfo.org/docs/CatFoodProteinFatCarbPhosphorusChart.pdf

 

Regarding the syringe you could take a look at the BD ultrafine with 6mm needles (the shortest ones)

 

Thanks for the replies everyone.
The insulin is the zinc one - sorry, I have 16.5 years experience with regular human insulin (changing doses, formulas, names, etc) so my brain can't keep the name of the animal insulin in my head!
I have been reading around the forums a little bit today to try and learn more. I THINK we're going to get through the rest of the Blue Buffalo food that we have (and the stray cat I've been feeding on the porch is all too happy to help with that) and then I'll try the Tiki brand. I saw it at Petsmart but just didn't look closely enough at it. I've looked into prices on Chewy.com and amazon too, to see if anyone has decent prices for the subscription service. Turns out, not really. I'll have to really sit and compare when I have a few minutes.

Yoshi spent the day with the vet on Monday 11/13 so they could check his blood sugar every few hours. He didn't eat his full breakfast (I think they both disliked the flavor of the day) but I still gave him his full 1 unit dose, per the vet. So when they first checked him, he was at 177, they offered him food but he turned his little nose up, probably too scared of being at the vet. Then he tanked to 62 so they gave him some glucose and rechecked him a half hour later and he was at 377!
The vet recommended a half unit dose for the next day and today he's being rechecked. The vet seemed very confident that Yoshi could go into remission. *~jealous~*

We bought a ReliOn meter and strips for him from Walmart so I attempted to check his blood sugar several times over the weekend but was not successful. I've watched the youtube videos and everything, so I'll just have to keep trying, especially if he gets removed from insulin completely. I'm hoping that's what they're going to tell me when I pick him up in a couple hours.

Also - does anyone else's cat REFUSE to pee all day at the vet and decide to let loose in the car on the way home?!? Gonna lay down a trash bag under him this time....

 

Be patient with the testing we all struggled with that in the beginning, but it does get easier, once you establish the routine with him, don't forget to give him a reward after each try even if you do not succeed, the bribing is important, also warming up his ears helps a lot.

I'm not surprised of him acting off at the vet, most kitties get really stressed there, they do not eat or act as their usual selves that's one of the main reasons why home testing (even the curves ) ends up being much more reliable

As for remission fingers crossed (and paws obviously) and you will get there, but this is a long journey and you have to keep in mind not all of them go into remission but they all can get regulated and be ok