Hello, we're Paula and Lucy

Lucy was diagnosed today by her vet as being borderline diabetic. Her BG was only 186 at the vet, but she's lost weight and has been drinking a lot and peeing a lot. I was relieved that she has something treatable, we were afraid she had cancer and would not be with us much longer. I have some experience with feline diabetes, I was on FDMB back in the 1990's with my cat Flash, and then again a couple of years ago with a short term foster Nanner. Because of this I don't have the fear, etc. a lot of newbies have, I know we can do this. To start the vet wants me to change her diet to all low carb canned and moniter her, and we'll go from there.

I know I should probably get fasting numbers on her just to get a baseline, but what other numbers are useful for diet controled?

Thanks,

pAula £ Lucy

 

Welcome Lucy and Paula. Sorry about the diabetes diagnosis but as you know this is the best place to be. It would be great if you can get some home testing in to monitor. Sounds like your vet wants to try diet control first. This is a great place to start reading www.catinfo.org It will talk a lot about diet and will give you a list of food to choose from. We try to stay under 10% carbs and most of us try to get even lower like under 5% carbs. We also test with human meters because it is cheaper. Many get the Relion Confirm or Micro which uses less blood and the Relion Prime which needs more blood but the strips are cheaper. You can buy them at Walmart. You should get lancets that are 26-28 gauge. You can read a lot on these forums and pay particular attention to the signatures as many of us has the name of our food that we are using. Let us know if you have any additional questions.

 

Welcome back Paula.

I'm not 100% sure I can answer your question, but I believe it would stand to reason that a diet controlled cat would be "something like" a cat in remission, or OTJ.

I'm on an OTJ Trial right now and understand that if you got a +3 from mealtime, if that value is lower or close to the fasting number, you can see the pancreas is working on its own.

I find with my girl Genghis that feeding multiple small meals through the day and evening helps her immensely, versus the every 12 hours. If you click on Genghis SS below and scroll down to the OTJ trial you can see the values I get to keep an eye on her - 130 and under are considered acceptable.

Good luck and keep us posted on Lucy's progress!

 

Don't want to be a downer here but was wondering if your vet did the full blood check test to rule out kidney problems. Hopefully they did. Cats with CRF try to flush toxins out of the system and start drinking a lot, peeing a lot as a result.

 

Several things may cause increased urination. Did the vet rule out renal disease and hyperthyroidism? Those are very common.

Vet stress can elevate the glucose 100-180 mg/dL, so a 186 taken at the office could be just due to stress.
Infection may elevate the glucose levels; was a cystocentesis done to rule out urinary tract infection?