My 11 or 12 year old girl, can't remember on my current cup of coffee, just got diagnosed with the diabetes the other day. She also has bronchitis but that's not the point of this post. Anyway, I'm curious if anyone has some good internet resources on managing a cat with the diabetes. I did some googling but there's far too much out there to sift through and frankly most of it seems to be the same article.
Some particulars about my cat
- uncooperative with medicine, takes two vet techs to pill her
- low appetite, not motivated by food, on mirataz daily for 1+ year to stimulate the appetite
- extremely picky eater
- will only graze 11-15 times a day
- will not consistently do wet food, and even when she does it needs to be blended with water to thin it out
- will not do treats or food of any sort other than her "beloved" UTI prescription kibble
- her UTI prescription kibble is a combo weight management and UTI after it was reformulated
One of the biggest concerns is with her appetite (you can see my post history). The reason I took her to the doctor is because it had gotten lower and she was losing weight AND she was just guzzling water, but mostly due to low appetite...while on the appetite stimulant. This seems to be uncommon enough it's not mentioned in any of the diabetes pages I've seen. When we start insulin, I'm hoping it increases her appetite because we've been having to give her double and triple the dose of mirataz to even eat what she has been. I've read that the appetite decreases and that is a bit scary. Right now we have no plans to change her food but that might be something we need to do. My cat is so picky the vet is very hesitant because it's never gone well and we end up with a cat that isn't eating but will eat the UTI prescription kibble so we just go back to that. cat eating some food > cat not eating the proper food.
But yeah, any resources you have that are good I'd appreciate. And also just stories on how it was initially getting used to shots and blood readings with a cat that generally does not cooperate or things I should watch out for given some of the particulars about my cat.
Some particulars about my cat
- uncooperative with medicine, takes two vet techs to pill her
- low appetite, not motivated by food, on mirataz daily for 1+ year to stimulate the appetite
- extremely picky eater
- will only graze 11-15 times a day
- will not consistently do wet food, and even when she does it needs to be blended with water to thin it out
- will not do treats or food of any sort other than her "beloved" UTI prescription kibble
- her UTI prescription kibble is a combo weight management and UTI after it was reformulated
One of the biggest concerns is with her appetite (you can see my post history). The reason I took her to the doctor is because it had gotten lower and she was losing weight AND she was just guzzling water, but mostly due to low appetite...while on the appetite stimulant. This seems to be uncommon enough it's not mentioned in any of the diabetes pages I've seen. When we start insulin, I'm hoping it increases her appetite because we've been having to give her double and triple the dose of mirataz to even eat what she has been. I've read that the appetite decreases and that is a bit scary. Right now we have no plans to change her food but that might be something we need to do. My cat is so picky the vet is very hesitant because it's never gone well and we end up with a cat that isn't eating but will eat the UTI prescription kibble so we just go back to that. cat eating some food > cat not eating the proper food.
But yeah, any resources you have that are good I'd appreciate. And also just stories on how it was initially getting used to shots and blood readings with a cat that generally does not cooperate or things I should watch out for given some of the particulars about my cat.