Newly diagnosed

Hello !
I have a 10 year old cat who was just diagnosed diabetic. I started him today on Royal Canine food . The vet prescribed him 1 can of "satiety" in the morning and 1 can at night and mid day I am giving him a small handful of glycobalance hard food. Before now he was on regular friskies hard food (not a great diet). He was 18 pounds last year at his check up and 14 pounds yesterday. He does have an increase in urination and thirst. They gave me a prescription for Lantus and we are planning on starting it next week. Is it recommended to start Insulin right away or should I see if the better diet helps first? I am very new to all this but have been reading alot about it.

 

Welcome to FDMB. I'm very glad you did some research and found the board. There is a wealth of information here on the board, but please do not let that intimidate you. As you become more familiar with navigating the forums, it will seem more like "home". The basics of effective feline diabetic treatment are proper diet, insulin therapy and home testing, just like with humans.
We do recommend feeding a low carb wet diet for our sugar cats. Please visit www.catinfo.org for information on feline nutrition.
Depending on where you are in the world (we have members from all over the globe) we can make some recommendations for low carb canned foods in your area.
The Royal Canin Glycobalance canned food is a 14% carb value, and we try to feed wet food with a 10% or less carb value.
The weight loss, increased urination and thirst are typical symptoms of feline diabetes.

I suggest two things, not in any particular order:

Revisit the Home page and read the Getting Started and the Education sections on the right side of the page. It's great basic beginner information that you can use as a foundation going forward.

Second, let's take this question of whether to start insulin right away, or wait until you see if changing the diet helps, to the Main Health forum HERE as there is more traffic there and you can get faster response. This Intro forum is more like a welcome mat and not as heavily monitored.
If you like you can just copy your message here, begin a new thread there with a title indicating you are a new member and briefly what the question is.
We will do everything we can to help you figure out "what's next", how to best help your cat, and relieve some of the anxiety you might be feeling with this diagnosis. We all started at the beginning too, and can help with the next steps in the "sugar dance".
Best wishes going forward

 

Hi Julie!

I'm relatively new to the whole feline diabetes situation too. You'll really like it here, there is a lot of information / support from experienced care givers to guide you along the way. It makes the whole situation a lot less overwhelming! My cat Mowgli is just a couple years older than Smokey and is also on Lantus, so I'm sure I will see you over on the Lantus/Basalgar and Levemir Insulin Support Group (ISG) board and maybe a few other boards in the forum as well.

Welcome and good luck with everything!

 

Welcome to you and Smokey