Diagnosed Today

Hi all! I've been reading this forum and all the articles all day today as my 11-year-old male was diagnosed this morning. I wanted to introduce myself here because I have a feeling my questions will start piling up.

About my cat Woofy: he's 11, as I said and pretty overweight. I know his poor diet and weight contributed to his diagnosis, but I'm very committed to changing all that to get my kitty healthy again. I started feeding him an organic, grain free dry food a few months ago, but I'm probably going to be switching to a prescription diet after I get my follow-up at the vet completed.

Nice to "meet" you all and I hope I can start to feel less clueless after a while with a little help from this forum

 

Welcome to FDMB, the best place you never wanted to be.

There are 4 things you'll need to manage your kitty's diabetes:
- You - without your commitment, the following won't work
- Low carb over the counter canned or raw diet, such as Friskies pates. See Cat Info for more info (no need for prescription diets!)
- A long-lasting insulin such as ProZinc, Lantus, BCP PZI, or Levemir
- And home blood glucose monitoring with an inexpensive human glucometer such as the WalMart Relion Confirm or Target Up and Up (the pet ones will break your budget!)

 

Welcome Amp and Woofy! You'll get a lot of good info here and a lot of support. We've all been there, feeling guilty, scared and overwhelmed. It does get better, really. Hopefully your vet will recommend home testing, that's important. If you don't feel that your vet is answering your questions fully, please do yourself and Woofy a huge favor, and find a vet who's well educated in the treatment of feline diabetes. Don't buy the prescription food from the vet, too pricey and too high in carbs, there are lots of low carb over the counter wet and dry foods that you can use.

 

Hello there Woofy is rather, a-hem big boned, but adorable all the same!

You'd be pretty lucky to find a vet that's really across feline diabetes but luckily you don't need one since you've found us so if you're happy with your vet in all other respects there'll be no need to change. Just get your vet to prescribe the insulin and get your advice here. Your vet probably is going to suggest the prescription diet but as already mentioned it's not the best choice of food for a diabetic kitty. The best choice is low carb wet food, with a little high carb wet food on hand for when you might need to bump up the BG. If you can it's best to change the diet before starting the insulin as it can make a big difference to the BG numbers.

A lot more vets are supportive of home testing these days but there are still some in the dark ages that discourage it. Home testing is pretty essential to keep a kitty on insulin safe and most cats adjust to it very quickly - with the aid of low carb treats or some other form of reward.

You can start preparing Woofy for testing now by rubbing the edges of his ears whenever you think about it and telling him what a good boy he is for letting you do it, then you can incorporate clicking a pen near his ear to simulate the sound of the lancet device. By the time you do it for real he'll probably think nothing of it!

 

Welcome to FDMB. You have received a lot of great advice so I won't repeat it. As you read through the information on this site and discover you have questions, please ask them. You have a lot of experienced people on this site and we are here to help you.

Woofy looks exactly like my cat Cracker. Cracker thinks he is member of the "No food shall be left in a bowl" club.