New member from FB, 2 sugar-catties, Canadian

Hello everyone !

Like many others hopefully, today's FB outage has me seeking out a support forum as a back-up "just in case", and a place to chat with other sugar-baby caregivers.

My name is Lea, I live in Ontario, Canada.
Married, mom to a trio of teens, a trio of bunny rabbits, and our 2 diabetic catties.

Back in the spring of this year, I spotted an adoption ad featuring a Ginger catty with absolutely no shame, showing off his tummy fluff for the world to see, and I fell in love on sight.
The ad mentioned that Rocco was diabetic though, which lead to emails to the humane society, to my vet, discussions with my husband and our kids - because a chronic illness is a family issue, as is bringing in any pet.

A couple of interviews went by, and it wasn't long until I was sitting at the humane society with 2 of my kids and a typical cat-sized carrier, only to be met by a big fluffy ginger cat who literally OOZED fluff out of all the ventilation holes in the carrier. The foster mom even drove us home <3 She was literally the sweetest lady.

Rocco was a joy immediately - sweet, snuggly, beautifully easy to do blood tests on, no issues with injections. The whole family fell in love in a heartbeat.

I did a TON of research, met with our vet, and requested a change to Lantus, and not too long after - a month or so - he had a couple of mild hypoglycemic events, and went into remission <3

Then in the summer, I got a full-time job, which at first was at-home, but I went back in to the office in September full-time. Some of the kids are in school in person too, and my husband also works out of the house . . . I started looking for a companion for Rocco.

At first, I looked at kittens, and any other adoptable kitties around, but I knew in my heart that I needed to bring in another diabetic catty. We had all the "stuff", I'd done the research, and we have a great vet - and animals with chronic illnesses are not the most "adoptable" animals

It was not too long after that, that I was put in touch with a person needing to rehome their 11-yr old diabetic cat, and we adopted Rogue.

Rogue has been through medical hades, severe hypo, seizures, unregulated sugars, sporadic dosing.
She is anxious and aggressive, she hisses and growls, swats and bites.
She was declawed at 2 yrs old

She has been with us for about 3 weeks now and is starting to settle in, even snuggling a bit with Rocco instead of attacking him <3 We have a LONG road ahead of us with her, and this is just the start of our journey.

 

Welcome! Rogue sounds a lot like Mr Kitty when I first got him, took me months to socialize him...and if you look at my spreadsheet you'll see he's now putty, even for my toddlers!

 

Welcome to FDMB and a big thank you for adopting 2 sugar kitties. When I adopted my first sugar cat I also had another one at the time. I recently adopted Charlie who is my 6th diabetic cat.

Many of us you may already know from the FB site. Look around the site and you will find lots of info to help you.

 

Wonderful to have you here Lea, even if it took a Facebook outage to get you here! This is where the real magic happens!

As long as you're not busy with FB, got a suggestion on your "Signature"...you might want to go ahead and add your name so that later on down the road, people will know what to call you.

If you look at all our other signatures, you'll also see examples of our spreadsheets. They're one of the most important tools we use here so it'd be great if you could get one set up for Rogue (since Rocco's in remission, he doesn't need one right now)

Here are the Instructions on getting the FDMB spreadsheet but if spreadsheet's aren't "your thing", feel free to send me a private message by clicking on my name and choosing "start a conversation" and I'll be happy to set one up for you. We are very data-driven here so anytime you need advice, the first thing we'll want to do is check your spreadsheet to see what's been going on with Rogue's numbers.

 

Welcome. Waving from the Kawarthas.

 

Signature updated, and spreadsheets added.

I honestly *LOVE* the spreadsheets, and they are great for getting information to my vet too.

 

Hello neighbour !!!

 

yeah it's great to have a vet that is willing to learn and understand them too!

Just FYI...the version you're using is from another Facebook group dealing with Feline Diabetes. They pirated ours, made some changes and whatever they did makes it impossible for some people here to get them to open. It may be helpful to switch over to our original version (You should be able to copy/paste most of your information)