8/06 Vegetable AMPS 12.8

Here is a link to yesterday. http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/threads/lantus-once-daily-thoughts.142107/#post-1469577

Today is a good day so far. Vegetable has forgiven me & is back to being a cuddle bug with lots of purrs!

She woke me up at 6:30am for food so that's a good sign & when I fed her she ate most of what I served her. My hubby is home today so he's going to look after veg until I get home from work.

 

Great to hear that Vegetable is feeling better! Vines that she stays on that healing path!

 

Great that she is eating! Feed her absolutely anything she wants. Try and get a ketone reading next time she uses the box if possible.

 

The plan is to feed her as much as she wants when she wants and this afternoon I'm hoping I can catch her use the litter box or even better when she used the toilet (she taught herself that one) then test for keytones plus a trip to the store to get testing supplies, syringes & high calorie low carb food. Hubby is going to test her BG soon, so I will update the spreadsheet when he's done.

 

Great plan!

 

Wait, she taught herself to use the toilet???? Explain, please!

 

Yes she taught herself! One day I was at work and my husband called and told me Veg goes pee on the toilet, he saw her when he was in the shower. I didn't believe him until a day or two later I was heading to the bathroom and Veg decided it would be fun to race me. Once she beat me to the bathroom she jumped up and did her thing then gives me this look of "what, you have never seen a cat use the toilet before?" She has been using it ever since and that was about 10 years ago this started. I guess she learned from watching us. Now if she would only teach the rest of the bunch to use the toilet it would make life so much easier and cheaper, lol

She also knows how to open doors, she hangs from the door knobs & tries to twist it until it opens. One day we were in our apartment and the neighbour comes over and he says to us "you know your cat is sprawled on my living room floor, right?" Apparently she opened the door and we didn't see or hear it and she invited herself to hang out at the neighbours, she liked to go visit his guinea pigs. After that day we have learned to always leave the door locked or she sneaks outside.

 

I see a 83 (4.6) on the spreadsheet. I'd give her a couple tsp of her regular food to try to encourage her to surf in those healing numbers. I'd also get a test an hour later to make sure she's not dropping too low.

You have a very clever cat - perhaps a little too clever! My aunt's cat also learned to pee in the toilet the same way. The aunt found out when she went to yell at her DH for not closing the door while he used the loo, to find it was the cat!

 

@Wendy&Neko already on it. Hubby is at home looking at vegetable so i instructed him to try to get her to eat which she ate a little bit of wet food and I explained about the syrup. Ok, so she is now down to 3.7, hubby just fed her a little bit of honey and I told him to give her a little bit more honey in 10 minutes then retest her in 30 minutes. He's a little freaked out, this is his first time checking her blood sugar and he thinks he's hurting her cause he has to poke several times to get a sample plus he's panicking a bit cause she is getting low. I told him to first of all calm down and take a breath, it does not hurt her to check her sugars and it's going to be a bit of trial and error to see how she reacts to the insulin especially for the next few days since she is still recovering.

 

Going below 2.8 (50) is when we start to worry about intervening with high carb food if you are following Tight Regulation. Tell DH to breathe - he's got this and can control the numbers with honey. My DH was a little anxious for the first low numbers too (as we all probably were).

Are you following TR or SLGS method for dosing? The reduction point for TR is 50 but it's 90 (5.0) for SLGS.

 

Because the cat has ketones, and is recovering from DKA, you want to try to keep the sugars higher than in a "normal" diabetic cat. Try to keep them >100 but <200. Use whatever carbs you need to in order to maintain these. A reduction puts her at risk for increasing ketones.

Get some medium or higher carb wet, or feed her a little dry if she keeps going low. You want to be able to -increase- the insulin a little to beat those ketones out, but this sometimes requires more carbs and more food.

 

I'm trying to follow a little bit of both but since I have to work and I cant be home with vegetable every day I guess you could say i'm following the SLGS. I test as much as I can and try to make sure she eats as much as she wants/can since she is still underweight. Vegetable has only been on the lantus for a week now and 3 days of that she was at the vet clinic so I didn't get to monitor her during the cycle.

I don't want to put her at risk for anymore keytones, she is just getting better so I will do my best to keep her fed and her BG up a little bit so she a little bit more wiggle room. Last night I was worried she wasnt eating enough when she came home so I fed her with some food with a syringe. I only gave her a little bit because I didn't want to stress her out anymore then she already was. The trip home from the vet's office was very stressful for her, she usually loves going in the car but yesterday she hated everything.