Cat with Diabetes

My can has been diagnosed with diabetes and as part of her treatment needs
low carbohydrate food. I understand this means no biscuits and fresh meet
and fish. Can anyone add anything to this?
Has anyone been successful in treating a cat for diabetes without a vet?
Thanks

On Sat, 25 Sep 2010 13:50:58 +0100, "T"
wrote:

My can has been diagnosed with diabetes and as part of her treatment needs
low carbohydrate food. I understand this means no biscuits and fresh meet
and fish. Can anyone add anything to this?
Has anyone been successful in treating a cat for diabetes without a vet?

Not to sound too cynical, but there is no success with diabetes, human
or feline, only prolonged failure. I say this as a T2 diabetic of over
40 years, on insulin since 1999. My "success" is defined as still
being able to see, having functioning kidneys, and all my extremities.

Ripley, our grand old man, developed it when he was maybe ten. We fed
him low-carb foods, but with six other cats and free-feeding stations
around the house we couldn't guarantee that was all he got. He
eventually ended up on insulin, and endured the daily pin pricks to
test sugar level and inject insulin with great dignity, but he was
never truly stable after that. Year after year he became slower and
less active. When his sugar was in balance he was pretty good, but he
was given to spells of extremely low sugar that would send him into
convulsions. He was about 15 when we finally had to let him go.

We spent thousands on his care over the years, and I understand if you
are reluctant to do so, but there really isn't much you can do without
a vet, whereas with a vet you can keep her quality of life better for
longer. If you aren't checking sugar regularly, you are just shooting
blind when it comes to treating things like convulsions, vomiting,
diarrhea, loss of balance, etc.

You could, at the very least, get a blood glucose meter. Our vet said
we needed the super deluxe for-cats-only model, which cost a small
fortune, but over the years I often compared it to my own meter
results and saw no difference. You can get a human meter for about
$20, but then they kill you on the cost of the test strips.

When she starts acting strangely (stumbling, walking in circles,
throwing convulsions, etc.) then you can at least check her sugar to
see if that is the cause. If it is low (and I'm deliberately omitting
specific numbers here because I'm not a vet) you can use a plastic
medicine syringe to force-feed her some Karo syrup to get her sugar
back up.

Of course, then there is the exposure to driving the sugar too high
and, without insulin, not being able to bring it down again.

I know it sounds complicated and, had I not worked it all out in my
own care for so many years, I probably would not have had a handle on
it. I know my wife never really understood the process.

Anyway, I've rambled on too long. I wish you the best of luck. If you
get to a point of wanting to test her sugar, I developed a method that
works pretty well. Just drop me a line and I'll explain it.

Dick Evans

On Sep 25, 12:50*pm, "T" wrote:
My can has been diagnosed with diabetes and as part of her treatment needs
low carbohydrate food. *I understand this means no biscuits and fresh meet
and fish. *Can anyone add anything to this?
Has anyone been successful in treating a cat for diabetes without a vet?
Thanks

My cat was given a big dose of dexamethasone by an idiot vet who
didn't even know of something called 'steroid induced diabetes' until
after he had done this and I have now paid thousands for having a
diabetic cat for life.

Switching insulin brands can be a serious problem. A number of years
back I can't remember the brand, but word went out that this was no
longer going to be available. So the vet switched to Vetsulin.
Something went badly wrong. The cat crashed. And it was really
expensive pulling him back from that.

Now this year they have announced the Vetsulin supply has been cut off
and I scored what I think were the last two bottles in town. If you
Google for Vetsulin you can find all sorts of people who seem to have
had serious problems with that. I don't know, maybe I've been lucky,
but I don't think I've seen any of those problems in years of using
that. However I've almost exhausted the last of my Vetsulin stash and
will have to go through another switch in the next few weeks. I'm
leaning in the direction of seeing if I can get non prescription
Humulin from Walmart of Walgreens. If anyone has any good information
and hands on experience for what to substitute for Vetsulin porcine
U-40, preferably non prescription, that will hopefully not be pulled
off the shelves in a couple of years I would really appreciate the
information.

Wellness sells very good quality wet food for cats that I have had
excellent luck with. I'm not sure what is in it, but a couple of
people I recommended this to have reported back that their cat went on
hunger strike for a while when faced with eating their old stuff after
trying a small can of Wellness. So use some caution. Petco sells
12.5 oz. cans that are cheaper per ounce than the 5.5 oz. or 4 oz.
cans sold elsewhere. And if you sign up with them then once or twice
a year they will give you a 10% off coupon for your next purchase. I
get paid nothing to say this, in fact I keep paying Petco for
Wellness, but less than I was paying elsewhere.

Evo sells the only kibble I have been able to find, even after a lot
of searching, that has only 7% carbohydrate. Almost all the kibble
has 30-60% carbs and the manufacturers seem to go out of their way to
avoid putting that information on the label. Even some "quality"
kibble like Science Diet sold and recommended by vets turn out to be
35% carb when you really press the manufacturer to tell you the carb
content. My cat really didn't like the switch to wet from a previous
diet of wet and carb kibble. A few years later when I stumbled onto
the Evo kibble and dropped some in front of him I heard a snort and
they were gone. You can get 2 kg bags, try to keep air away from it
and keep the supply in the fridge to try to slow the process of it
going stale. He now leads me over to the fridge door and tells me he
knows I can open that door and get him more of those kibbles now!

Some people claim they can easily get blood glucose readings at home.
I've tried and the cat will kill me before he will let me do that.
But he is older and slower now, so I might be able to accomplish that
during the brand switch. If you watch the ads you can sometimes get a
glucose meter with ten test strips free after rebate. You might be
able to do that once for each brand on the market. The strips have a
date coded into them and the meters refuse to use strips after the
expiration date.

Have your vet show you what he is looking for in circulation around
the toes and in the gums. Then you can keep an eye on this yourself.

You want to avoid having blood glucose go extremely high for very
long. That can lead to neuropathy, the cat won't be able to walk,
etc. With insulin and a little time it is possible to have some
recovery from that, but it is really rough on them and you really want
to avoid that.

If you can get the cat's weight way down and have close to zero carbs
then some people claim they can control or even reverse diabetes this
way. Others on the net have written that they were sure the cat was
going to kill them in their sleep because of putting the cat on a
diet.

Water consumption and urine output can give you a rough idea whether
glucose is too high. With practice you can tell a lot from this. If
urine output goes up you know you have to deal with this now.

Try to find a vet who has had direct experience with keeping cats with
diabetes right side up, but even that is no guarantee.

"T" wrote in message
...
My can has been diagnosed with diabetes and as part of her treatment needs
low carbohydrate food. I understand this means no biscuits and fresh meet
and fish. Can anyone add anything to this?
Has anyone been successful in treating a cat for diabetes without a vet?
Thanks

No, but it should be pretty simple.....Cat food costs 50 cents a can, and a
can is only 4 ounces or less.....That means they are charging you $2.00 a
pound.....I can buy whole chickens for about half that, and boneless chicken
breasts for the same 2 bucks a pound. So, I feed my cats pure
chicken....They love it, and my wife and I can eat it right along with them.
Chicken meat is high in protein, low in fat and carbs, and is very good for
diabetics, both human and feline.

wrote in message
news
On Sat, 25 Sep 2010 13:50:58 +0100, "T"
wrote:

My can has been diagnosed with diabetes and as part of her treatment needs
low carbohydrate food. I understand this means no biscuits and fresh meet
and fish. Can anyone add anything to this?
Has anyone been successful in treating a cat for diabetes without a vet?

Not to sound too cynical, but there is no success with diabetes, human
or feline, only prolonged failure. I say this as a T2 diabetic of over
40 years, on insulin since 1999. My "success" is defined as still
being able to see, having functioning kidneys, and all my extremities.

Ripley, our grand old man, developed it when he was maybe ten. We fed
him low-carb foods, but with six other cats and free-feeding stations
around the house we couldn't guarantee that was all he got. He
eventually ended up on insulin, and endured the daily pin pricks to
test sugar level and inject insulin with great dignity, but he was
never truly stable after that. Year after year he became slower and
less active. When his sugar was in balance he was pretty good, but he
was given to spells of extremely low sugar that would send him into
convulsions. He was about 15 when we finally had to let him go.

We spent thousands on his care over the years, and I understand if you
are reluctant to do so, but there really isn't much you can do without
a vet, whereas with a vet you can keep her quality of life better for
longer. If you aren't checking sugar regularly, you are just shooting
blind when it comes to treating things like convulsions, vomiting,
diarrhea, loss of balance, etc.

You could, at the very least, get a blood glucose meter. Our vet said
we needed the super deluxe for-cats-only model, which cost a small
fortune, but over the years I often compared it to my own meter
results and saw no difference. You can get a human meter for about
$20, but then they kill you on the cost of the test strips.

When she starts acting strangely (stumbling, walking in circles,
throwing convulsions, etc.) then you can at least check her sugar to
see if that is the cause. If it is low (and I'm deliberately omitting
specific numbers here because I'm not a vet) you can use a plastic
medicine syringe to force-feed her some Karo syrup to get her sugar
back up.

Of course, then there is the exposure to driving the sugar too high
and, without insulin, not being able to bring it down again.

I know it sounds complicated and, had I not worked it all out in my
own care for so many years, I probably would not have had a handle on
it. I know my wife never really understood the process.

Anyway, I've rambled on too long. I wish you the best of luck. If you
get to a point of wanting to test her sugar, I developed a method that
works pretty well. Just drop me a line and I'll explain it.

Dick Evans

I am diabetic also, and if my cats were diabetic, I think I would experiment
with the urine test strips......They are not as quick, but they would be a
lot easier on the cat. My health insurance pays for my meter test strips, so
I could use some of them on the cat.......

On Sep 25, 7:50*am, "T" wrote:
My can has been diagnosed with diabetes and as part of her treatment needs
low carbohydrate food. *I understand this means no biscuits and fresh meet
and fish. *Can anyone add anything to this?
Has anyone been successful in treating a cat for diabetes without a vet?
Thanks

I am a tech that specializes in working with diabetic cats and getting
them into remission. We routinely get remissions in our patients by
feeding a low carb, grain free wet food- Innova EVO 95 (any flavors)
or Wellness Beef/chicken, Chicken, or Turkey (no other flavors will
work) along with using Lantus insulin (which is shown to offer the
best chance of remission) in conjunction with daily home blood glucose
testing. We keep the BG numbers as close to normal as possible and
over time (it can be weeks or months) the numbers drop as does the
insulin dose and we get remission. My most recent patient went into
remission in 8 days. If you allow your cat ANY dry food, forget about
remission and plan on treating diabetes for the rest of your cat's
life. http://www.yourdiabeticcat.com is a good website, but they are
stil recommending PZI insulin. Lantus is by far a better option and I
haven't used PZI in years. Here is one protocol for using Lantus that
is written by the main researcher on feline diabetes and the use of
Lantus to get remission:
http://www.drjohnson.com/a_article_c...iabetes.htm l

On Sat, 25 Sep 2010 17:03:01 -0700, "Bill Graham"
wrote:

I am diabetic also, and if my cats were diabetic, I think I would experiment
with the urine test strips......They are not as quick, but they would be a
lot easier on the cat.

Unless they've changed them in the last 30 years, urine test strips
are ridiculously inaccurate. They don't measure lows at all and they
don't even indicate a high until blood glucose gets high enough to be
spilling into the urine. That could be a hundred points or more higher
than you could detect with a meter and test strips. And even when it
does show a high level, it's only a very vague high level: A
comparative color of green vs a digital readout from your meter.

I don't know any diabetics who still use urine strips.

Then too, there's the problem of catching the cat in the act of
urinating and getting the strip into the urine stream.

On Sep 25, 11:08*am, wrote:
On Sat, 25 Sep 2010 13:50:58 +0100, "T"
wrote:

My can has been diagnosed with diabetes and as part of her treatment needs
low carbohydrate food. *I understand this means no biscuits and fresh meet
and fish. *Can anyone add anything to this?
Has anyone been successful in treating a cat for diabetes without a vet?

Not to sound too cynical, but there is no success with diabetes, human
or feline, only prolonged failure.

This is utter BS. Cats go into remission and stay in remission all the
time provided their caretaker does things right. You kept your cat
diabetic by free feeding dry food (so-called dry diabetic diets are
too high in carbs.) The failure here is yours.





I say this as a T2 diabetic of over
40 years, on insulin since 1999. My "success" is defined as still
being able to see, having functioning kidneys, and all my extremities.

Ripley, our grand old man, developed it when he was maybe ten. We fed
him low-carb foods, but with six other cats and free-feeding stations
around the house we couldn't guarantee that was all he got. He
eventually ended up on insulin, and endured the daily pin pricks to
test sugar level and inject *insulin with great dignity, but he was
never truly stable after that. Year after year he became slower and
less active. When his sugar was in balance he was pretty good, but he
was given to spells of extremely low sugar that would send him into
convulsions. He was about 15 when we finally had to let him go.

We spent thousands on his care over the years, and I understand if you
are reluctant to do so, but there really isn't much you can do without
a vet, whereas *with a vet you can keep her quality of life better for
longer. If you aren't checking sugar regularly, you are just shooting
blind when it comes to treating things like convulsions, vomiting,
diarrhea, loss of balance, etc.

You could, at the very least, get a blood glucose meter. Our vet said
we needed the super deluxe for-cats-only model, which cost a small
fortune, but over the years I often compared it to my own meter
results and saw no difference. You can get a human meter for about
$20, but then they kill you on the cost of the test strips.

When she starts acting strangely (stumbling, walking in circles,
throwing convulsions, etc.) then you can at least check her sugar to
see if that is the cause. If it is low (and I'm deliberately omitting
specific numbers here because I'm not a vet) you can use a plastic
medicine syringe to force-feed her some Karo syrup to get her sugar
back up.

Of course, then there is the exposure to driving the sugar too high
and, without insulin, not being able to bring it down again.

I know it sounds complicated and, had I not worked it all out in my
own care for so many years, I probably would not have had a handle on
it. I know my wife never really understood the process.

Anyway, I've rambled on too long. I wish you the best of luck. If you
get to a point of wanting to test her sugar, I developed a method that
works pretty well. Just drop me a line and I'll explain it.

Dick Evans

On Sep 25, 1:23*pm, bill wrote:
On Sep 25, 12:50*pm, "T" wrote:

My can has been diagnosed with diabetes and as part of her treatment needs
low carbohydrate food. *I understand this means no biscuits and fresh meet
and fish. *Can anyone add anything to this?
Has anyone been successful in treating a cat for diabetes without a vet?
Thanks

My cat was given a big dose of dexamethasone by an idiot vet who
didn't even know of something called 'steroid induced diabetes' until
after he had done this and I have now paid thousands for having a
diabetic cat for life.

Switching insulin brands can be a serious problem. *A number of years
back I can't remember the brand, but word went out that this was no
longer going to be available. *So the vet switched to Vetsulin.
Something went badly wrong. *The cat crashed. *And it was really
expensive pulling him back from that.

Now this year they have announced the Vetsulin supply has been cut off
and I scored what I think were the last two bottles in town. *If you
Google for Vetsulin you can find all sorts of people who seem to have
had serious problems with that. *I don't know, maybe I've been lucky,
but I don't think I've seen any of those problems in years of using
that. *However I've almost exhausted the last of my Vetsulin stash and
will have to go through another switch in the next few weeks. *I'm
leaning in the direction of seeing if I can get non prescription
Humulin from Walmart of Walgreens. *If anyone has any good information
and hands on experience for what to substitute for Vetsulin porcine
U-40, preferably non prescription, that will hopefully not be pulled
off the shelves in a couple of years I would really appreciate the
information.

Wellness sells very good quality wet food for cats that I have had
excellent luck with. *I'm not sure what is in it, but a couple of
people I recommended this to have reported back that their cat went on
hunger strike for a while when faced with eating their old stuff after
trying a small can of Wellness. *So use some caution. *Petco sells
12.5 oz. cans that are cheaper per ounce than the 5.5 oz. or 4 oz.
cans sold elsewhere. *And if you sign up with them then once or twice
a year they will give you a 10% off coupon for your next purchase. *I
get paid nothing to say this, in fact I keep paying Petco for
Wellness, but less than I was paying elsewhere.

Evo sells the only kibble I have been able to find, even after a lot
of searching, that has only 7% carbohydrate. *

EVO is not Actually 7%. A vet I know had it sent out and tested and it
can back as 13% carbs. There is NO dry food that is appropriate for a
diabetic cat as they all have ingredients that are innappropriate for
a carnivore, especially a diabetic one. Diabetic cats should only be
fed canned, grain free foods with no more than 3-5% carbs.






Almost all the kibble
has 30-60% carbs and the manufacturers seem to go out of their way to
avoid putting that information on the label. *Even some "quality"
kibble like Science Diet sold and recommended by vets turn out to be
35% carb when you really press the manufacturer to tell you the carb
content. *My cat really didn't like the switch to wet from a previous
diet of wet and carb kibble. *A few years later when I stumbled onto
the Evo kibble and dropped some in front of him I heard a snort and
they were gone. *You can get 2 kg bags, try to keep air away from it
and keep the supply in the fridge to try to slow the process of it
going stale. *He now leads me over to the fridge door and tells me he
knows I can open that door and get him more of those kibbles now!

Some people claim they can easily get blood glucose readings at home.
I've tried and the cat will kill me before he will let me do that.
But he is older and slower now, so I might be able to accomplish that
during the brand switch. *If you watch the ads you can sometimes get a
glucose meter with ten test strips free after rebate. *You might be
able to do that once for each brand on the market. *The strips have a
date coded into them and the meters refuse to use strips after the
expiration date.

Have your vet show you what he is looking for in circulation around
the toes and in the gums. Then you can keep an eye on this yourself.

You want to avoid having blood glucose go extremely high for very
long. *That can lead to neuropathy, the cat won't be able to walk,
etc. *With insulin and a little time it is possible to have some
recovery from that, but it is really rough on them and you really want
to avoid that.

If you can get the cat's weight way down and have close to zero carbs
then some people claim they can control or even reverse diabetes this
way. *Others on the net have written that they were sure the cat was
going to kill them in their sleep because of putting the cat on a
diet.

Water consumption and urine output can give you a rough idea whether
glucose is too high. *With practice you can tell a lot from this. *If
urine output goes up you know you have to deal with this now.

Try to find a vet who has had direct experience with keeping cats with
diabetes right side up, but even that is no guarantee.

wrote in message
...
On Sat, 25 Sep 2010 17:03:01 -0700, "Bill Graham"
wrote:

I am diabetic also, and if my cats were diabetic, I think I would
experiment
with the urine test strips......They are not as quick, but they would be a
lot easier on the cat.

Unless they've changed them in the last 30 years, urine test strips
are ridiculously inaccurate. They don't measure lows at all and they
don't even indicate a high until blood glucose gets high enough to be
spilling into the urine. That could be a hundred points or more higher
than you could detect with a meter and test strips. And even when it
does show a high level, it's only a very vague high level: A
comparative color of green vs a digital readout from your meter.

I don't know any diabetics who still use urine strips.

Then too, there's the problem of catching the cat in the act of
urinating and getting the strip into the urine stream.



Well......I didn't say it would be easy.....:^) You might have to line the
litterbox with them, or get the chemicals and make your own in 16 x 20 inch
sheets......but at least, you wouldn't have to stick the poor cats paws with
a needle.