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Monday, June 27, 2011

My "Sick" Cat

My name is David Hall, and I'm an inconsistent blogger. It's been two months since my last blog. Hi David.

All I can say is it's been a busy summer! I'm here now, and I wanted to share a personal story about one of our family cats named "Mae". Mae is about ten years old and has lived with us almost her entire life. She started off as my oldest son Tristan's cat, then adopted my youngest son, Dylan, when Tristan moved out.

Mae is a very mellow "live and let live" kind of cat. She tolerates anything and is most happy sitting on the pillow next to Dylan as he sleeps. We had noticed that Mae seemed to be losing a little weight, but we weren't too worried about it since Mae has always struggled to maintain her ideal weight. OK, she's fat.

Anyway, when we brought Mae in for her annual check-up, labwork, and vaccines, we got an unpleasant surprise: Mae has diabetes.

The good news for Mae (and us) is that diabetes in cats can often be "cured." With a specific type of insulin (Lantis), a special diet (M/D by Hills), and monitoring and adjusting at home, any diabetic cat, if diagnosed early, has a reasonable chance of going into remission, and resuming a normal life without further insulin injections.

We have started Mae's insulin, and Dylan regularly gives her her special food. I will be teaching my wife how to get a drop of blood from Mae's toe to test her sugar levels (this has to be done four hours after the insulin when I'm typically at work). We are hopeful that we can cure her, and thankful that we did the "routine" labwork at her check-up. If Mae's diabetes had gone on undetected, we would have had a much sadder prognosis.