Charlie the Foster Cat
Charlie came to the shelter on 7/21/21. His owner was very distraught to leave him, but she had to move in with her elderly mother to take care of her. Her mother was extremely allergic to cats and in poor health, so Charlie could not live there.
When he arrived, he was on the thin side and his coat looked really dull and dirty. Since he was a senior, bloodwork was done and his glucose was extremely high. He was prescribed insulin and sent back to the shelter. He was responding slowly to the insulin, and I remembered a fellow rescue friend telling me about her diabetic cat that was managed with food. I called her and got the scoop and decided to try this method on Charlie. He did very well and started to gain weight and his coat began to look much better.
No one was interested in adopting Charlie with his age and special need, so I decided to take him home to foster. Doing this meant I had to change my own cats to low carb canned food so that Charlie would stay strictly on this diet. I did so, and was so happy with the results on my own cats! No more vomiting, coats looked great and the chubby ones lost a little weight J So, all was well in my world, and Charlies’ glucose was normal!!
Charlie is the most laid back cat ever! Lol. We used him for shelter Christmas photos (the photo with the dog and in the santa hat). He had never met the pup before, but gave her kisses!! He fits in perfectly with my personal cats, as well. Grooms them, sleeps with them, etc. He’s never met a stranger…human or otherwise! He will live with me for the rest of his life!
Thanks so much for all you do!
-Tracy
Animal Welfare Coordinator
Effie
Ineffable, Effie for short, was about 16 years old when we diagnosed her with diabetes. She’d been inactive, overweight, then started losing weight. She was eating okay, not great, just okay. It seemed like she was drinking more water and urinating more than normal but I had a lot of cats at that time and couldn’t be certain.
Effie had been a feral cat for 12 years before she finally allowed me to catch her. I had caught her one other time and she gave me the most precious litter of blue kittens, but she wasn’t happy so I had her spayed and let her go. She was a stubborn one, but I grew very “close” to her from afar. Before her diagnosis, we had thankfully become great friends. It made her insulin treatments so much easier. We monitored her regularly and seemed to have her regulated.
Then I realized her eating was not as good as it had been and seemed to be getting worse. We checked her glucose and it had increased so we upped her insulin dose, but her appetite didn’t improve. One morning, I was in a huge rush to get to work and made the worst mistake. She wouldn’t eat her food right away but I gave her insulin anyway, thinking she’d eat before I left. But she didn’t.
She went into shock and started having seizures. Instead of going to work I left with Effie, for the vet’s. They did all they could but she didn’t improve. I think her body was wearing down during the day because her seizures were weaker and weaker. I chose to take her home for the night and held her in my arms all night. The next morning I had to end her suffering. I’ll never forgive myself for that mistake.
– Andrea
Khannie
My 12 1/2 year old girl, Khannie, has been diabetic for about a year and a half. It took a horribly rough month or so to get her stable and we nearly lost her in the beginning. She had a lot of health issues and became immunocompromised and needed tons of at home medical care. Thankfully I worked for a vet for 4 years so I was able to do it all, save myself a lot of emergency visit expenses and allow her to recover in the comfort of her own home. Having known diabetic cats thru work and friends, both the Dr and I had never seen a cat respond like that and it was a very abnormal situation.
Thankfully she has been incredibly stable and quite happy since all that. She’s been getting 2 units twice a day and, aside from that, lives just like any other normal cat. A few months back at her routine checkup, she was unfortunately also diagnosed with early stage kidney disease. There’s not a lot of research out there linking the two, if being diabetic makes a cat more susceptible, but I think it would be interesting and beneficial for the evolution of cat health in the future.
Here is the first picture I took of Kahnnie when she was diagnosed with diabetes.
Hopefully more research can done to provide more info on Diabetes to vets and pet parents.
When she was a little kitten we thought she was a boy so we named her Khan after Shere Khan. But then we found out she was a girl so I changed it to Connie but left the spelling like Khan to be Khannie.
-Jen