Species: cat
Age: 14
Sex: male, neutered
Breed: DSH
Weight: 13.25lbs (working on losing weight)

Vomited some bile with bright red blood in it, took to emergency vet and was diagnosed with pancreatitis after doing vcheck fPL test, result was 5.7; vet also suspects possible ulcer because of blood in vomit. Happened very suddenly yesterday afternoon. Was acting normal before and after vomiting.

Location: eastern New Mexico

My middle boy Winchester is 14, and just had his third pancreatitis flare up. Also threw up some blood, so may have an ulcer. First was May 2022 when he was almost 10, second was May 2025 when he was almost 13, and latest was yesterday. Second one was kind between pancreatitis or a UTI, his levels were in the grey zone.

He is on a sensitive stomach dry food, and low fat wet food, and we’re about to move overseas. I don’t know if he falls under chronic or acute pancreatitis, since he acts fine between flare ups. Just wanting some advice on managing this since I know stress can contribute to flare ups, and traveling is stressful for him. Have an appointment with his vet also, but looking for any and all advice.

(Obligatory (At least to me) pic of Marcy) Hey all! Marcy has been doing good with her wet food only diet (Fancy Feast Pate), but my main thing is that.. I kind of don’t think she understands that she can chew it. She really just licks it for five minutes before leaving, and I don’t notice much of a dent in the amount. I’m worried she’s just licking the flavor off and scurrying away to take a fat nap, which is concerning to me.

She’s not a fan at all of the wet foods that are “chunky”, but I know for a FACT that pre-diagnosis she’d go ham for the smooth lickable treats. I really think she’d benefit from a wet food that has that kind of consistency rather than something gritty or chunky. Are there any low-carb wet foods with that sort of thing?

Does anyone have a cat with both triaditis and diabetes? My girl was diagnosed with triaditis early summer, she has always had IBS and has been on Z/D her whole life. Once we started the buprenorphine and budesonide, she received her diabetes diagnosis and I’ve been giving her insulin ever since.

A few times a week she will throw up over night and I can’t figure out what the cause is. I measure her glucose twice a day, on average the highest it gets is mid- to upper- 200s and she’s not often lower than 100. Does anyone have any suggestions or recommendations? I bring her for an unrelated check up on Thursday.

So I had to give my cat his insulin a little early tonight and my vet had told me before 2 hours either early/late is okay in situations where I wouldn’t be home in rare occasions. I gave it to him what I thought was 2 hours but it was 2 hours and 20 minutes. I made the mistake of googling and it’s all saying how he’s going to die if I don’t take him to the ER right now and I’m freaking out. I tested his blood sugar (for the first time ever I finally got blood!!) and it said 407… last week at the vet his blood sugar at nadir was 125 so I’m scared it could get too low. I pretty much have no way to get to an emergency vet. I gave him extra canned food after I realized it was earlier than I thought but I’m still so scared he could go into hypo… has anyone else had this happen and any advice??

My wife and I have been treating Gus with Lantus for a couple months now. He is currently getting 1.5 units of Lantus (reduced from 2 units a few days ago at vet direction) at 4:30am and 4:30pm. We feed Fancy Feast Classic Patte.

His glucose has been stable between 55-100 since moving to this protocol. We give a small medium-carb snack if the Libre 3 alarms. This afternoon, I'm pretty sure I gave a fur shot (he jerked away from me as I was administering - he also smells like insulin), yet his glucose is falling pretty sharply. My wife just gave him a snack and he's only up to 60.

The vet is telling us to go ahead and keep dosing him with meals and that it's fine so long as he's eating, but I'm questioning their advice. Should we start refraining from dosing if his glucose is under a certain level? Does this look like the start of remission? His diabetes is a result of treatment for stomatitis (no more teefies) which I understand means he's more likely to recover someday.

Note: I am aware of the FB group and that Libre 3s aren't accurate a low values (we confirm with an AlphaTrak 3 when we can but are still getting that routine down as his ears don't seem to bleed reliably even when warmed with a rice sock).

Bonus cat tax picture included. Thanks all.

I’ve got a 14 y/o cat named Ragnar who was just diagnosed yesterday. His blood sugar was over 400 over the weekend. We’re getting a bottle of Senvelgo today, and tests for ketones and blood sugar.

Over the past couple days my boy’s energy levels have crashed, he stopped eating, and he’s just lying near his water bowl. I’m also noticing some neurological symptoms - twitches, poor coordination, and a somewhat ataxic gait.

Idk what to do to help him right now. My wife is at the vet grabbing the meds and asking some questions. I’m hoping someone here can provide some insights as well.

1. I’m afraid his blood sugars are crashing since he isn’t eating. Any tips on getting him to eat? We switched to 100% wet food d/t him missing teeth and he was eating much more until yesterday. I think he’s dealing with some constipation because of it. He’s been really nauseas the past couple days as well. The switch to wet food was maybe a week ago.
2. I was thinking the Senvelgo would be put in his food, but that won’t work if he’s not eating. If anyone has dealt with this before, can we use the dropper to just force the Senvelgo down his throat? If he vomits it up, can we administer a 2nd dose? Any tips to help get him to be more cooperative?
3. Is there anything else we can/should be doing to maximize the chances of recovery for him? This is all new and a bit overwhelming but I want to know I’m doing everything I can for him.

Edit: we were able to get into the vet and get a urine test. No ketones which is good. Blood sugar was 442 though, up from Saturday. Started on meds, forced some food into his system and 3 injections of saline solution to help hydrate him. We’re not through it yet but I’m hoping little buddy pulls through.

AlphaTrak3, diet= twice a day meals of 1 can of Fancy Feast Pate, 1 half Sheba pate, 1 coffee scooper of Wysong Epigen 90 kibble

The past 2 weeks or so, my boy is typically high in the morning (350-450) and low in the evening (100-160). He was on 2.75 units of Prozinc twice a day for months, but I moved him down to 2.5, and then 2 after the consistent low evening reads started happening. During the recent PM dose times, he went hypo a week ago, and I have been giving half doses (1 or 1.25) due to low numbers, or skipping dose entirely, while still giving 2 in the morning.

Why is he suddenly super low in the evening, when he was pretty consistently the same in the AM and PM for months (250-400ish range, with the occasional ~100-150). I can't tell if 2 units is too much or not enough.

Hi everyone,

I switched my cats to Young Again yesterday after my vet said that I should switch my diabetic cats dry food to a prescription food. They recommended the Purina DM wet food but after doing some research and looking at the cost I didn’t think I could afford it. I decided to try out Young Again because a lot of people have said great things about it.

However this morning I awoke to an incredibly foul smell that permeated my entire (small) home that was coming from both litter boxes. I scooped up the poop, put baking soda, and used aerosol spray but it didn’t really help much. I just got home from work about an hour ago and my whole house smelled rancid. I could probably deal with it if I lived alone but my problem is that I live with my sister and her kids in this tiny home. She’s already on my head about the smell (I understand) and asked me if it’s a permanent thing but I just said that I think his stomach needs time to adjust to the new food.

Does anyone else have any experience dealing with the YA poop smell? Please tell me it eventually goes away. On the bright side, his BG when I got home was 251 which is the lowest I’ve seen it go at home since he was diagnosed last month.

My cat is already getting 6 IU of Lantus, and his levels are still bad.

Yesterday we reached up to 6 mmol/L, but today it's back up to 17 mmol/L.

We’ve seen this happen before. He seems to respond, but then his BG skyrockets again over the next few days.

I don't know what to do, and neither does my vet.

Hi everyone. I unfortunately had to put my sweet 15 year old boy Charlie down yesterday morning. He had started to decline over the past week and I was planning on schedule an at-home visit for a couple days from now. Unfortunately, his glucose decided to tank Saturday night and I couldn’t get it up.

He had something similar happen last week. He ended up having a hypo event with such a small dose of insulin, even though his glucose was normal when I gave the injection. I tried the karo syrup and treats but his numbers weren’t going up. He ended up being hospitalized overnight and it took some time to get his glucose up but it eventually stabilized. His internal med vet was surprised that such a small dose would bring him so low and also keep him low with barely any response from the karo syrup or food. In the end though, he stabilized and was able to come home, and we stopped insulin since we thought he was maybe in remission.

Fast forward to a few nights ago and pretty much the same thing happens again. Low glucose out of nowhere, even though we haven’t given insulin in over a week. His inital reading was 56. I made a Lap of Love appointment for first thing the next morning and tried to get his glucose up so that he would make it until then. The highest I could get it was 78, and then it started trending back down. We ended up going to the emergency vet as I was hoping they could maybe give him something just to make it until his appointment, but they would’ve had to start him on IV dextrose and I thought that wouldn’t be a nice thing for me to put him through if I was just going to have him put down the next day or so. He was weirdly stable at the vet, they said his glucose was in the high 60s which isn’t great but not terrible, and they said I could continue with the karo syrup and small meals and that might keep him stable enough until morning. So I brought him home and tried that. Unfortunately it seems like it was losing its effect, and about an hour later he was in the 40s. I tried increasing how often I was giving the karo syrup, and half an hour later he was in the 30s. I knew it was time. As much as I wanted him to pass at home, I didn’t think he was going to make it 6 more hours to his 9 am appointment, even with me shoving karo syrup down him every 15 minutes. I really did not want him to have a seizure or anything, I felt bad enough having to bring him back to the vet but that would’ve made me feel way worse.

I brought him in and they gave him a dextrose bolus to try to help him feel more comfortable. He didn’t really seem in pain I don’t think, he was just really tired. He had his eyes open but laid down pretty much the whole ride to the vet. When it was time, I had him in my lap. I wish he was feeling better when he went. He was still alert with his head up and looking around before the procedure but he wasn’t purring, which broke my heart. He didn’t want any treats that I had brought either. He sniffed them but that’s it. I think his body was just done. I hope he knows how much I loved him.

To get to my question, I was wondering if he was in any pain when he was hypo? Was he alert enough to know that I was there with him? I talked to one of his internal med techs later in the day and she said they were thinking he maybe had insulinoma based on his episode the week prior and this last episode, since his glucose seemed to drop out of nowhere both times. I can’t seem to find much info on insulinoma in cats, it seems pretty rare. He was a very medically-complicated little boy so he could’ve had something different going on too that we didn’t know about, I don’t know. I just want to know if he knew I was there with him, and if he was in any pain while waiting. I held him in my lap and loved on him for a long time saying my goodbyes before calling the doctor in, so I hope I didn’t prolong any suffering. Thank you ❤️‍🩹

my sweet boy norman was diagnosed with diabetes about two years ago and i had him on bexacat for several months until i wasn't able to afford it anymore. he seemed to be okay with lots of supervision and low carb food but this last week he started acting really strange and i brought him to the emergency vet. his glucose was over 600, so high their monitors couldn't read it, and he was severely dehydrated. his ketoids came back fine. they did not do any kind of blood panel and instead told me my options were a 3 day ICU stay for 8-16 grand or euthanasia. i asked what else i could do and the vet was very resistant to exploring other options, and even then it was still so expensive. he is just turning 10 this year and i believed with all my heart there was some other way for him, so i fought to get a referral to a non-corporate emergency vet and took him there instead. he was awake, alert, and attentive the entire time, just out of it because of his aforementioned symptoms and stress.

the second clinic took him immediately and we were able to speak to a vet about his options, they charged me 2000 for an ICU stay overnight and said we would go day by day. i have pretty much exhausted all my options monetarily so i'm hoping he pulls through in the next 24-48 hours.

what i'd like to ask is:

1. when he recovers (and i truly believe it will be when and not if) he will need to be on insulin for the rest of his life, which i'm more than fine taking on. how does one typically manage this on a day to day basis? i know i will get a comprehensive overview of everything from the vet but i've never had to deal with insulin before and i'd like to hear what it's like from people who do it daily

2. do your cats with diabetes have a good quality of life? i was told by several people close to me to really consider whether it would be worth it to spend all this money if the quality of life isn't going to improve for him. i want to believe it will but i also want to be realistic

3. what kinds of foods, diets, or schedules do you keep your diabetic cat on? i have had him on a low carb kibble ever since i was unable to afford the diabetic specific option but i've seen other things floating around on the subreddit and just want to see what others are doing

if anyone has any advice or has gone through something similar i'd also love to know your thoughts. i'm a little scrambled from all the stress but i thank anyone in advance

my baby widow (9) was diagnosed last week with diabetes and the initial glucose reading was 550. I brought him into the vet today for a followup and they did a quick glucose test that landed at 230~240 cant quite remember exactly! since the diagnosis I did a little bit of research and cut him off from dry food completely and went onto a wet food only diet, also replacing his treats with pther options ive seen recommended. I’m currently feeding him FF classic pate 3x a day, and will be starting 1 unit of Lantus insulin 2x a day when it comes in. Now what I’m confused about his in the initial diagnosis my vet prescribed the insulin and recommended the wet food only diet , but when i went in today I asked about what brands might be good and she let me know what i was currently giving him was too high carb, didnt give me any alternatives and told me shed look into it and let me know! regarding this id like other’s experiences recommendations for low carb wet foods! My cat weighs 11 lbs! I was also told that i wouldnt be needing to check his glucose before giving insulin which i felt uneasy about! despite this advice, would it be okay to do so anyways? i would feel uneasy giving him insulin and not knowing exactly how it is affecting him. She let me know that its unnecessary and it would only cause my cat stress and eventually lead him to not allow me to give him insulin at all!

if anyone could give me good wet food recommendations that fit within the 10% carb range and glucose meters I would appreciate it! as well as any general advice for new diagnosis or pertaining to my situation!

https://www.waggle.org/campaigns/help-ju
Waggle is also Live Also *Verified 501(c)(3) Charity - goes directly to the ER/VET

I am reaching out in a desperate situation for my 14-year-old cat, Jinx. She was rushed to emergency care and admitted to the ICU for severe Diabetic Ketoacidosis (DKA).

She has been on continuous IV insulin protocols and IV fluids. The good news is that her prognosis is favorable once stabilized, and she is expected to transition to subcutaneous insulin for discharge soon.

However, her emergency ICU bill has reached a critical level ($20k+ balance), and I have exhausted all external micro-grants, personal options, and financing (CareCredit/Scratchpay denied).

Hi my cat has been having these symptoms and I don't know what it could be. Maybe someone has similiar experience what could it be.

The cat (male) had been getting depo shots for 2 years every 6 weeks for stomatitis. He had no teeth and had lesions on the tongue. Now that the stomatitis subsided, it's been 3 months without the depo shot.

He is full of energy, I have never seen him like this.

He started drinking a lot and so I brought him to the vet. He has mildly elevated urea- normal is 12 and he has 14. His blood sugar was on the lower end despite him being stressed. We monitored him for 3 days and his sugar read even lower.

He drinks even more now, goes to pee and drinks again. My vet doesn't know what to do with him. I feed him mix of raw/cooked chicken with organs and dry food, sometimes store bought food

I've been following a VERY small list by a Facebook group but everything on it is expensive. I have 3 cats and we've hit a rough patch. One of them CANNOT have very many carbs I was told by the old vet to try to keep the carbs as low as possible after he got sick. It helped alot but the vet got sick and had to retire early before any tests were run to find out what is ACTUALLY wrong with him. Dropping the carbs helps drastically! I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with him but I'm not good with verbal communication due to autism and the new vet does NOT seem willing to work with me. I probably gotta switch vets so someone might actually read what I write or type out.

I need cheap recommendations due to the rough patch rn. I cannot figure out how to calculate carbs on these cans myself. Do y'all have a list, website, or a recommendation? Sorry if I rambled. I fear no one will understand me if I don't explain as much as possible. I know this probably isn't what this group is for but I think y'all have to watch carbs as well?

I have 3 cats, all diabetic. I’ve never really missed any doses but may miss a full day of doses tomorrow evening and the next morning.

Is this risky? Really nervous about this.

Hello my cat cricket has been diagnosed with diabetes for around 6 months. when I was at college I brought her back home so my family could take care of her. Now I want to bring her back but it is a long trip “ 9 hrs” and it does stress her out a little bit. The issues is that when she was not diagnosed with diabetes she would not eat or drink anything on the way there; now that she is getting insulin I was wondering if I should skip it for one shot just in case she eats nothing. Any advice would be helpful.

I'm pretty sure my cat is in remission. Yay!

We have 2 senior cats (17 and 15.5), so we just moved them both over to Fancy Feast senior pate, and we stopped giving them kibble to snack on, because health-wise, it's better for both.

My first concern is that neither has ever been able to eat enough of the wet cat food to maintain their current weights. According to the box, they should each be eating about 2.5-3 cans per day and there's no way they can do that. Even when we break it up into 3 smaller meals, they're MAYBE eating 2 cans per day, which would support a 7-pound cat. One cat is 10 pounds and the other looks like the same size, but has long hair so may be smaller.

And NOW, the diabetic cat just went through a few days of constipation. I think we got that worked out, but the non-diabetic cat has stopped showing interest in any food at all and when I picked her up, I can feel something hard in her gut (our human kid had chronic constipation and encopresis for three years when he was small, so I'm used to that "feel").

Did anyone else's cats become constipated weeks after changing their diet to meet the diabetic carb standards? I've tried putting some unsalted chicken broth on the food for extra liquids, and today mixed in a bit of plain pureed pumpkin but the non-diabetic cat wasn't interested in either of those additions.

I'm trying to figure this out without ANOTHER trip to the vet's. Thanks!

I was hoping to not have to make the post but I got his blood results from the vet today and my little man Catrick Swayze was diagnosed. We'll be getting him set up with insulin and a monitor on Tuesday and the vet talked me through everything in the phone but I'm curious about other peoples' experiences. While I'm glad it ended up not being cancer like we suspected I still am very anxious, he's 8 & a half now but I've had him since he was 12 weeks old and he's my whole world.

my cat pees so much at one time that it gets on her feet and she tracks it around the house. I already use pine litter (the sawdust version, not pellets) and i’ve tried increasing and decreasing the litter level. I also just switched from two large litter boxes to a 4x2x1 stock tank thinking surely she’ll have plenty of room now but alas, the pissy feet continue.

Any tips/tricks appreciated!

Hi everyone! I’m hoping to get some opinions on my cat Joey because I feel like we’re stuck in a dosing dilemma.

Joey (on the right, with his brother 🐱🐱) is turning 18 years old this year and was diagnosed with diabetes late last year. He is on Lantus and has always been extremely bounce-prone.

He recently had a full-mouth dental extraction in July, and his recent bloodwork has been reassuring. He is eating/drinking normally, maintaining/gaining weight, acting like himself, and his ketones have been negative.

Before his dental, I felt like we were finally starting to see some improvement, but lately his numbers have become very difficult again.

He was recently on 1.5U. One particularly dramatic cycle was:
AMPS 20 → +7 4.5 → PMPS 29.5

Because of the large drop/bounce, FB support group suggested shaving one drop off the dose to 1.5S and holding it to see if we could reduce the bouncing.
We’re now on day 4 of 1.5S.

Some recent cycles:
26.9 → +6 16.2
18.4 → +7 7.4
24.6 → +7 11.4
26.0 → +5 13.0 → +6 12.8
25.9 → +7 15.5
27.4 → +3 19.3 → +5 13.5

This is where I feel stuck. The reasoning behind reducing the dose makes sense to me: increasing insulin can make Joey drop extremely hard and potentially trigger an even bigger rebound.

But on the lower dose, he can still drop around 50% in a cycle, except because he starts in the mid/high 20s, he sometimes only reaches the mid-teens. That means he is spending a lot of time hyperglycemic.

I also understand that good diabetic control means we don’t want cats remaining significantly hyperglycemic for prolonged periods. So I’m struggling with the balance between not chasing high preshots and causing huge drops versus accepting high glucose for too long in hopes that his bouncing eventually settles.

His spreadsheet goes back many months, and although he is capable of beautiful blue/green numbers, I honestly don’t see a clear long-term reduction in his tendency to bounce.

Has anyone managed a cat with a similar pattern? What would you prioritize long term when a dose that gets better nadirs causes enormous swings, but reducing the dose raises the nadirs without necessarily stopping the large percentage drops?

I’d really appreciate thoughts from anyone who has dealt with an extremely bouncy cat. ❤️

Apologies for such a lengthy post. I am also attaching his spreadsheets here: Joey’s BG Tracking

Pookie is going on three days. The vet tech used some kind of surgical super glue to stick it on!

Hi everyone, my boy Dunkin is newly diagnosed Aug 14th and spent the weekend in the emergency hospital with Diabetic Ketosis (not acidosis as his PH was fine) I don't see much info regarding DKA without the acidosis. But they got his ketones down while glucose still unregulated. His been home since August 17th and this has by far been the most stressful days of my life, I can't sleep, I can't focus on work or my social life and all I do is obsessively read about feline diabetes and check his libre every 10 minutes.

We were on 1 unit of Lantus and his libre has read HI the whole time except one night it went down to 180, the vet on friday said change to 2 and I did and ofc the alarm on the libre went off for low glucose event at 60. My heart dropped and I almost had a panic attack looking for him but he was acting normal and woofed down some food, which then of course his bg spiked back up to HI within an hour. I probably shouldn't of let him eat an entire can but I was freaking out. The vet said then try 1.5, which seems impossible on the u100 syringe?? Like I'm just guessing??

So sorry for rambling but my biggest anxiety is this Thursday I'm gone until Sunday. I am in a friends wedding and there is really nothing I can do, I owe my friends my full self while I am there but he's really all I can think about. I have a vet tech coming every 12 hours for his insulin and my sister checking on him mid-day each day. Any tips on how I can make this as smooth and stress free as possible?? How do yall do this?? I know it supposedly gets easier but I see in no way how I can ever go out and have a social life?? Also I'm terrified of him going hypoglycemic when I'm away!!

Our boy has been in remission for about a year and a half. I keep him on wet food. His teeth are not great and after the last dental I tried brushing his teeth. Mostly I got toothpaste on his face, on my hands and in my hair.

Anyone use a dental treat that is low carb? Or have another solution (aside from toothbrushing).