What the Hell is Feline Diabetes?!

Ok so I'm standing in the Office Max making copies for our new company on Valentine's Day and my vet calls my cell. She starts talking, gets to feline diabetes and I hear nothing else for about 10 minutes. I don't even know what human diabetes is, so all I'm thinking is "OMG he's gonna die". I tried to tune back into the conversation and she said "I'll understand if you want to put him to sleep." She also said it was treatable, but my needle-phobic self was going to be giving injections twice a day every day for the rest of his life. I told her I'd make an appointment to come back in with him and got off the phone. 20 minutes on the phone and I'd heard nothing but "diabetes" and the clanking of the copy machine.

I was in shock for a few days. I procrastinated. My happy Spot, sick as heck, but still purring, still wanting to hang out with me, still sweet. Two days later I decide to Google feline diabetes. All I knew about diabetes was that one of Jesica's friends had it. After a couple hours of reading, I ran across a site that said Feline Diabetes is Not a Death Sentence. It clicked - it was exactly how I felt. Spot had been given a death sentence and I was responsible for carrying out the execution. Here was this site, telling me I could do this. Excitedly I called Ronnie and told him "I don't have to kill Spot!" He laughed and then I laughed for the first time in days and suddenly I couldn't stop talking about feline diabetes. My friends were horrified - they weren't too excited about my new vocabulary.

I hurriedly made an appointment and learned how to "shoot the cat". I bought the special cat food. He hated it. Niko wasn't too thrilled with the new food either. Meanwhile I'd been reading and learned all kinds of neat stuff, and some really scary stuff. First off, there was a Blood Cult on that site! They all stabbed their cats' ears and tested the blood. What for??! I wasn't gonna do that, that's for sure! Then I was reading the food I'd bought for Spot was all wrong and that I was supposed to be feeding wet food. Hmmm.. was my vet wrong? It seemed so, and I was amazed. I thought vets knew everything.

Out the door I went, and bought 5 flavors of canned Fancy Feast. Spot loved it, Niko hated it. In my haste, since I only half-read anything when I'm in spastic learning mode, I failed to notice that we don't switch our beloved kitties to wet food without reducing the insulin dose. Within 24 hours, I was killing Spot and had no idea why. He looked like a cow manure pile with whiskers. So back to the FDMB to find out what was wrong with my cat. Those crazy-assed blood cult people were still there. They said I had to start torturing my cat to save him. Yeah, riiiiiiiiiiiiight.

I continued looking at threads, trying to find someone who had a cat like mine.. why wouldn't he get better? Then I read the post about Hypoglycemia Symptoms. Oh. My. God. I raced to the Kroger, bullied the pharmacist into teaching me everything I never wanted to know about testing blood glucose and raced back home with my new purchases. I tested Spot right before his next shot was due and damn if he wasn't at 93, a perfectly unshootable number. Yep, I was definitely trying to kill my cat here.

Fast forward 2 weeks: Spot went off the juice.. no more insulin shots! He was diet controlled in under 3 weeks, perfectly healthy, ignoring the water bowl, and happily slurping up his new love - Fancy Feast. With yummy gravy. Niko still hated it, but life was good. Two healthy cats, I had a hero in the form of the FDMB, and was now a virulent member of the Blood Cult on FDMB. My friends couldn't understand anything I said, and were terrified of my new prowess with sharp objects.

So..... back to my poker league I went.. no more crazy cat lady.

Until a few months later.

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