Anyone ever take care of a diabetic cat?

In My Humble Opinion
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Reggie the cat is the sweetest animal you could ever imagine - he loves to snuggle into armpits and stay there all night long. He’s unusually social, too. Every Wednesday night I have about 15-20 people over to my house for a musical group, and he happily wanders among the guests seeking affection.

Obligatory photo: IMG_0076 | Carol Walker | Flickr

Anyway, he has just been diagnosed as diabetic. I picked him up from a week’s stay at the vet and got the scoop. I have to give him an insulin shot every morning and feed him 3x/day. It is understood that this is not likely to continue indefinitely - but if we can give him a few more good months or maybe as long as a year, we’ll do what it takes. (He’s a street cat so exact age is unknown, but about 4.)

If anyone else has cared for a diabetic cat, stories and tips are welcome.

No need to read further, but for the truly interested, here is the backstory: Poor Reggie. He was a “campus cat” at my son’s school, but unwisely decided to venture into the wider world. Alas, some kids decided to torture him (his own friendliness to strangers probably worked against him) and they set his tail on fire. One of his hind legs was completely shattered - presumably as he tried to escape and some lout grabbed him.

He limped back to campus and the Animal Welfare Club (my son is a long-time member) got him to the vet. They had to amputate his tail and shattered leg. As leaving a 3-legged cat to the mercies of the outside world seemed unwise, the AWC looked for someone to adopt him and we took him in.

For a while his life was perfect, but the fates have not been kind to this poor kitty. He developed a granuloma in his mouth that occasionally flares up, causing bleeding gums, horrible pain, and an inability to eat. The treatment is a steroid shot, but this eventually causes diabetes - and now it has.

Poor Reggie. :frowning: Between the diabetes and the likelihood that the granuloma will flare up again, his lifespan is almost certainly measured in months, not years. What’s more, my son adores him and has already gotten so choked up over his illness that he could barely function at school one morning. He’s a senior in a high-pressure academic setting with college apps hanging over him. This is not a good time to break his heart.

Ah well. As I write this, Reggie is lying contentedly on my son’s bed, giving himself a good tongue bath. For the moment, he is happy.

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I’m sorry. Hopes he passes without pain.

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I have taken care of two diabetic cats, and they both did really well. They were happy, and they seemed to feel just as good as they did before.

First thing - get Purina diabetic cat food. In some cases this can “cure” the diabetes. This happened with one of my cats. Even when this doesn’t happen, the Purina DM still really helps the cat.

Diabetes in cats is very different from diabetes in humans. My other diabetic cat wasn’t eating that food, but she also stopped being diabetic. She became diabetic after a serious illness. She was on insulin for a month or two, then suddenly stopped being diabetic. The vet told me this happens with cats.

This means it’s very important to carefully monitor your cat. He may start improving, which means the insulin dose will be too high. Some people are able to test their cat with a glucose monitor. I couldn’t, so I took my cats in to the vet periodically, just for a glucose test.

You also watch after a shot to make sure he doesn’t act sluggish. My vet told me to get corn syrup. If the cat seemed to being going into diabetic shock, I was supposed to rub the corn syrup on his gums.

But I’m not trying to alarm you. I never had anything like that happen. The cat who spontaneously got better started acting odd and sluggish after her injection, but she didn’t go into shock.

I think Reggie will probably do really well. The Cat Who Actually Stayed Diabetic For A While was a happy little cat who disliked getting his shot, but loved getting canned food right after. I think he was diabetic for a couple of years, and I don’t think it affected his quality of life at all.

Did the vet tell you how he expected this to affect Reggie? I realize his other health problems complicate things.

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Postariti, I can’t thank you enough for that post! It really helps, particularly because we are in Indonesia. Although we have an awesome vet, the products/services/training available here simply don’t match what you can get in the US. For example, no one would offer the corn syrup tip because it’s not routinely available here - the vet told us to mix 2 tsp of sugar into some water and force-feed the cat if he seemed sluggish and hypoglycemic. Luckily, I can get corn syrup through either the US Embassy commissary or simply by knowing what Japanese corn syrup (which is sometimes available) looks like. Should we need to administer treatment for hypoglycemia, I will definitely use that tip.

We can’t get the special Purina food here, but I can ask people to bring it from the US when they come on business for either my husband’s office or mine (we both work in offices that use a lot of international consultants).

So far (it’s only been about 8 hours since I brought him home) he seems okay. Trying to get him to eat is a little stressful, since I’m terrified of what will happen if he doesn’t. But so far, after properly reminding us that he is Cat, and shouldn’t be expected to dive into food without a proper show of indifference/finickiness, he has delicately consumed his required meals.

The real test will be tomorrow morning when I have to administer his first insulin shot. Wish me luck!

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Good luck!

I found that my cats didn’t seem to feel the injection very much. The vet had me give it around the back of the neck, and it seems they don’t have much feeling in that area.

My vet told me to make sure the cat ate right after his injection, I’m not sure what your vet told you about this.

And yes, it is terrifying at first. After a while you and the cat get the hang of it, and it’s fine. Reggie will get into the routine of eating on the new schedule, and after a while he will convince himself it was his idea.

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(sorry for posting twice, but I realized I did not answer Postariti’s questions)…

I actually asked about testing the cat at home; the vet said to bring him in one week from today so she can take a look. She agreed that home monitoring was theoretically a great idea, but seemed to think it was probably an unreasonable production.

His dose of insulin is VERY low - just one notch on the needle.

Hmm. The vet said to feed him, THEN give the shot. I’ll ask next week about reversing the order. I could see how the cat might not mind the shot if he became used to the fact that yummy food would follow.

Well … we are looking at keeping him alive as long as his quality of life is good. We really don’t know how long that will be. Maybe we will get lucky, maybe not.

Finding out details here is complicated; there are both language and cultural barriers (I’m American; the docs are all Indonesian, of course) to contend with. I am lucky to have a very conscientious and dedicated vet. However, I think she is reluctant to assess the likelihood of various outcomes.

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Here in Japan it’s common enough, vets are not quite as experienced and proactive as they are in the US, but even still it’s by no means considered a death sentence.

There is a fantastic group on FB called Feline Diabetes. There are literally thousands of members, all with great advice like Postariti is kindly giving you here, and people are kind and eager to help.

If you can’t find the group on FB please PM me.

So far I have only had a few close calls with my fatties, so I don’t have experience per se, but from what I can see monitoring his glucose is intimidating at first but gets easier, and with good control he could very well go OTJ (off the juice: no longer need insulin shots)!

All is definitely not lost!!

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We had a barn coat that seemed to be dropping weight. Turned out he was diabetic. We moved him into the house and began treatment. He did well for six months, but he was 18 and his kidneys failed at that point. He never minded the tiny needle.

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Do you have access to APO mail? I do, as well, and would be willing to mail the food to you, if that’s a possibility. PM me if you like.

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Our diabetic cat stopped needing insulin not once but twice. He was a trouper though and put up with a lot even with our attempts to kill him with od’ing him on insulin.

He never minded the shot. If your cat is used to being handled and picked up and squeezed and such, he’ll probably be fine with it.

My biggest tip: If you’re doing neck-scruff shots, don’t stick the needle through both layers of skin and into your own fingers. I did that once!

I hope he does great. It’s really just a routine that you’ll get into and probably won’t be too intrusive on your life or his.

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I don’t have a cat but I have two friends with diabetic cats. Both got it very late in life (over 10). The one lived for at least 2 years before he passed. The other has had it at least 2 years now and she is either cured or on less insulin now, I forget which, and is doing fine.

So yeah - definitely not a death sentence!

Good on your family for taking in this cat :slight_smile:

One tip is that leaving the cat when you go away is going to change. You’ll need to board him with someone who can do shots or, IIRC you have household staff? You’ll need to train the staff how to administer shots and make sure someone can come do it when you’re gone.

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I found that it was a good time to leave mine at the vet so they could do a glucose curve, where they tested his blood glucose every couple of hours throughout the day on his current dose to figure out what his pattern looks like and whether the dose needed to be increased, decreased, or left alone.

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My diabetic kittie has been living comfortably for years with his situation… please don’t stress out too much about this being a death sentence. Take care of him, of course, but know that it can be managed successfully.

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I’ve had a diabetic cat since 2007, when she nearly died of pancreatitis. She’s been getting 1 unit of insulin twice a day since then; we tried to take her off it a couple of times and control her glucose level with diet alone, but the numbers always started to climb. At this point, it seems safest to keep her on insulin. Otherwise, she’s in pretty good condition for a cat in her late teens. Grumpy and somewhat arthritic in the hind legs these days.

I used to board her at the vets when I had to go out of town, but taught my pet sitter how to give the shots a few years ago. They aren’t hard to do if you’re not squeamish about needles. The point is very fine and the amount of liquid tiny.

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The princess Natasha has had diabetes for several months. She’s 11 now. The vet said if she lost weight she might be able to come off the insulin but she lost the weight and unfortunately she is getting worse. She’s on the Hill Science diabetes and weight management food. I don’t think she would put up with me checking her sugars but she tolerates her insulin well. The vet told me to feed her first then give the shot. I find she’s so busy eating she barely notices the injection. However, I have noticed her drinking more recently so I increased her insulin from one unit twice daily to 2 units twice daily and I’m going to take her in for a glucose curve. She gets food and a shot twice daily and other than complaining that she is starving all the time, she seemed to be healthy and happy up until the last couple of weeks when she started with the increased drinking again.

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I had the same experience - mine lived about 6 years after diagnosis and died of something entirely unrelated at age 18. Once put on low carb food he didn’t need insulin at all.

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Our previous cat, Mercury, developed feline diabetes at around age 12. We’d gotten him as a stray about a decade earlier, and, despite being FIV-positive when we adopted him, he’d never had a lick of health issues.

At that time, he ate dry food (kibble). We’d headed out of town for a weekend, and set him up with a gravity feeder. We got home on Sunday afternoon, and discovered that he’d been violently ill. We hustled him to the emergency vet (it being Sunday afternoon), who quickly diagnosed him with diabetes, and prescribed insulin shots.

The next day, we took him to his regular vet – that vet confirmed the diagnosis, but disagreed on the treatment. He recommended starting out with a diet change, to a high-protein diet (i.e., canned kitten food; I think that Postariti notes something similar above with the Purina diabetic food). His opinion was that many cats who develop diabetes do so because they’re on diets which are nutritionally very different from what they’d eat in the wild (too much grain, not enough protein).

We followed this suggestion, and his health rebounded very quickly. We never had to go to insulin with him, and he lived healthily (even with the FIV) for another 3 or 4 years.

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I have a diabetic cat kneading my leg right now. He was pretty difficult to get under control and gets six units of insulin, twice a day. He doesn’t mind the needle, not that I can detect.

We discovered this because he had diabetic neuropathy that badly interfered with his using his hind legs. The poor thing would sort of waddle and scuffle around, and didn’t move much. The vet also has me give him vitamin B-12 once a week. That dose is a whole milliliter, in a syringe with a really huge needle. I feel like I’m stabbing him with a pencil or something. But after some getting accustomed to it, he’s fine with me doing that too. It took maybe 8 months of treatment to get to the point that he moves pretty normally, and now he’s always trying to get me to play with the mouse on a thread toy.

But he’s my third diabetic.

The one before him didn’t do all that great. For some reason he didn’t like the shots and would go hide. He died suddenly, apparently of a heart attack, only a year or two after diagnosis.

But my first diabetic, now, he got diagnosed at age 7, and he made it another ten excellent years getting shots twice a day. I got so good giving him shots that I could get him under the bed, under the deck, anyplace I could reach him. However I usually didn’t have to, as he would typically come looking for me around shot time. I don’t know if they made him feel good or if he just liked the attention.

I think of diabetes in cats as something that’s gonna require needles, and insulin, and probably the special food, and so I’m gonna have to take him down to my basement office every morning and every evening, where I keep his food in the mini fridge. In other words, it adds a task. It’s not the end of the cat. This boy here is purring extra loud at the moment. I guess he’d agree.

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Thanks everyone for sharing your experiences. @Lucretia - that’s a lovely offer; alas, we don’t have APO privileges (my husband’s job entitles him to a strange sort of semi-diplomatic status where he gets commissary privileges and the short line at immigration, but no APO). I suspect we’ll manage, but if we ever get desperate I may take you up on the offer for one delivery to a friend with privileges who would probably help out.

I’ve given the cat his first shot this morning and it was so easy I feel like I might not have actually done it (the dose is very small). Anyway, so far so good - the cat seems alert and happy, and he ate with alacrity this morning.

Eventually I’ll show the maids how to do the noon and late afternoon feedings so that I’m not permanently housebound - I don’t think I’d trust them to do the shot, though! That’s okay since it is once a day in the morning.

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Psychobunny, I’m wondering if your Natasha might have kidney issues. Her age, the weight loss and especially the increased thirst pinged my CRF radar.