Hello!

Hi, just received confirmation this morning that my sweet boy has diabetes. His name is Hotch. We believe he is between 7-10 years old. We adopted him almost two years ago. He was often looked over at the shelter because of his temperament. Before coming to the shelter, he was found outside in the middle of winter, at a local garage called Hotch's. He had to have his ears and half of his tail amputated because of frost bite. He had been through a lot and was quite angry at the world. He quickly warmed up to us and has stolen my heart. I spent many hours last night and this morning doing research and was happy to come across your forum. Just wanted to write a quick introduction before I post in the health section. This is all very overwhelming - especially with him being my first pet. I look forward to reading threads and hearing your advice and stories.

Alyssa

 

Just saying welcome

 

Hello and welcome. He is pretty. Glad he found a home with you.

 

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 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.
- 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.

Come on over to the Feline Health section to start posting, and to read what others are doing.