Emily is my newly diagnosed diabetic cat

Emily is 9yrs old and had her first glucose curve at vet office yesterday. We failed! They told me to increase her shots from 1 unit to 2 units.
She wouldn't eat when I got her home. Too upset. Beings how she had to have her food taken away, so she would eat before morning shot, she got hungry.
I gave in to her meows and gave her some ff about 1 1/2 hours past her schedule along with 1 unit of insulin.
By 3:10 my other cat told me something was wrong. Emily had a hypoglycemia event. I scooped her up from bathroom and immediately got her food...frisky with gravy, ff, high protein kibbles...I read threw your health notes again to make sure I wasn't missing anything and waited. She slowly came around...OMG.

 

Welcome!

Are you willing to home test Emily? Not only will it save you a lot of money because you won't need to take her in for vet testing, it is more accurate then the numbers you'll get a the vets office which are often inflated due to stress. Home testing will also help keep her safe from hypoglycemia, because you will know before you give each shot whether it is safe to give insulin. This is what human diabetics do, and it's no different for our cats.

What insulin are you using? Regardless of the type, when you're first starting insulin, it should never be raised in whole units in cats. Most cats (unless they have a high dose condition) need smaller dose changes in .25u-.5u increments.

 

The increments you increase does depends upon the does. Yes, for a 1 unit does an increase should be 1/4 units. However. with larger does like 5, increasing in 1/2 unit increments can be justified. For larger does even 1 unit increases can be justified.

 

I realize that Larry, the "when you're just starting insulin" was implied, but I guess that might not have been clear. I'll edit to fix.

 

Hello and welcome. Did you vet tell you to feed twice a day? It is easier on diabetic cats to eat smaller meals through the day.

 

Welcome to the message board, 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.

- 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!). This keeps your cat safe and saves you the cost of going to the vet for curves and done regularly, removes the need for a fructosamine test. All of our insulin guidelines use human glucometer numbers for reference. We record them on a grid; instructions are here.

- Low carb over the counter canned or raw diet, such as many Friskies pates. See Cat Info for more info. If already on insulin, you must be home testing before changing the diet. Food changes should be gradual to avoid GI upsets - 20-25% different food each day until switched. There are 2 low carb, dry, over the counter foods in the US - Evo Cat and Kitten dry found at pet specialty stores and
Young Again 0 found online.

- A long-lasting insulin such as ProZinc, Lantus, BCP PZI, or Levemir. No insulin lasts 24 hours in the cat, so giving it every 12 hours is optimal for control.

 

Thank you all for the information, Emily was diagnosed on June 12, and I was not prepared for it...yesterday I got a test kit and had a friend who is diabetic run it through with me. We are becoming a team. Thanks to this website I'm not alone and the resources have helped immensely. I had no idea there were so many cats with diabetes and caregivers doing everything in their power to give them what they need! Amazing! I'm learning and so is my Emily and our other cat, TNT, who is not diabetic, to take each day
as it comes.