New member with a Fur Buddy who is now diabetic.

Hello all, and thank you for a wonderful site dealing with a difficult, but manageable situation.

My kitty, Buddy, about six months back started exhibiting greater need for water. I am diabetic myself so I quickly realized what may have been happening, so I took my Buddy in for an examination and it came back that he was indeed diabetic.
So, I am now giving him his daily shots of ProZinc, and also taking glucose levels to see how he is doing. I feed him half a can of wet in the morning and half in the evening, Friskies, various brands. I tried getting them (Buddy and his sister Boo) to go to the pate' over the shreds/meaty bits, due to the carb count in the other gravy based blends, trying to reduce his carb count. I also give them a fixed amount of high quality, dry to graze on. With this, and giving him after starting at 1 unit, I now give him 3 units of ProZinc twice daily, 4 in the morning and 4 in the afternoon, right after he eats. My glucose curves are showing me, especially right before meal time that his blood sugar is in the 250 to 290 range. My vet wants me to go up to 3.5 units, and I will starting today. I am really trying to get him to the 150 zone in an attempt to get him to go into remission.

My question to you all is, what, from your experience do your glucose curves look like and what should I be looking for at different intervals in the 12 hour period? AS I get closer to the 100's of course I am worried of him crashing. I keep kayro syrup around just in case. A lot of the above I learned here from this site and I am in deep appreciation to you all, and the wonderful people posting "how-too's" on Youtube when it comes to testing your kitty.

I am also testing him with the One Touch Verio meter and strips. From all of your experience, how much of a difference have you seen between it and the ones recommended for cats? I borrowed the one my vet had and did a side by side test, and found the difference in readings to be not that great. In addition, I found the one made for animals to appear cheaply made, and I did not have all that confidence in it. So if my Buddy is reading at a count of 250 on the meter designed for human blood, should I be worried about it actually being a lower or higher count?

Again, my thanks to you all, and may all your kitties be well and happy.

 

Greetings, Zardoz and Buddy! Welcome to you both.

As you've probably noticed from reading member posts the majority of members here use Google spreadsheets to track their kitties' BG trends. It would be great if you could set one up for Buddy as it will enable members to give you better feedback on dosing and make better suggestions about things which might help improve regulation. Here are the links you'll need:

FDMB spreadsheet instructions

Understanding the spreadsheet grid

The spreadsheet is a great tool because it gives a much better feel for your kitty's pattern of response to the insulin being used over a longer period. If you need any help with the setup, just give a shout and we'll get someone to help get you going.

We also have a very helpful and supportive Prozinc group at FDMB. Here's a link straight to the Prozinc sub-forum:

http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/forums/prozinc-pzi.24/

There are a number of very helpful stickies about Prozinc at the top of the board. These will give you an idea of the typical period when nadir is most likely but nadir time does vary from cat to cat and from day to day for a given cat. The spreadsheet will help you learn Buddy's patterns.

In addition to getting help and support from other members using Prozinc, it may be helpful to you to check out the signatures of other Prozinc users' posts and click on the spreadsheet links for their kitties to see how they respond to this insulin. One can really learn a lot by looking at other kitties' spreadsheets. (Caveat: Every cat is different and may therefore respond differently to a given insulin!)

For any general questions you have, it's best to post on Feline Health because that board gets more member traffic than the Prozinc forum. (Same goes if you've got an emergency and you need to get more 'eyes' on your thread.)


Mogs
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Hi Zardoz (which was also a fun movie)! Welcome to the forum.

Same as humans, the food component is important. Food below 10 carbs is preferred. If you’re in the U.S., here is a link to the chart we use
http://catinfo.org/docs/CatFoodProteinFatCarbPhosphorusChart.pdf

Sorry, but I don't know about your meter. For nadirs, some kittehs are different. Leo does his nadirs around +7 hours. Your target of BG=150 is a good one, or even a little lower in the 110-120 range. It is important to get them below the renal threshold of 200, to get out of the general glucose toxicity range.

 

I can almost guaranteed if you eliminate the dry and get them on pate your dose will need to be cut in half.

What dry specifically are you feeding?

 

Info from vet Dr. Lisa Pierson on how to safely transition a cat receiving insulin to a lower carb diet:

catinfo.org - Feline Diabetes Page


Mogs
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Just jumping in to say... Welcome!

 

I want to thank you all so much deep in my heart for your input here.

I want you all to know that I and my Buddy are truly blessed. One, in that there is this site (A big thank you to the creators and maintainers), and so many who helps others navigate these waters. Second.... Buddy is in remission!!! Or so I hope. Days after I started this thread, I noticed he was a little more napping, and we all know pet habits are our biggest clues, so I decided to check his blood sugar before his shot and feeding. It was 77. So I did not give him a shot, the next morning I checked his blood again and found it at 170. It has been two weeks now, and his sugar has not been over 150 in all that time, and averaging close to the low 100's.

It is my sincerest of hopes that all of your kitties can get back to this state. I am not taking anything for granted here, so now the questions are for those who also had their kitties go into remission and what to expect, look for. I am still getting up early to feed, as I want to stay consistent with him and his diet. But in time may let that Saturday morning feeding wait till 8am instead of 4am! That is a ways off, and he does have dry to snack on if hungry. So there is still things to learn, so any input there on the remission side, it would be appreciated.