We have an epidemic of diabetic overweight cats. Many of these cats come in my office because they are drinking a lot and urinating more than they used to do. A simple blood test or urine sample confirms the diagnosis of diabetes mellitus in less than a minute.

Diabetes mellitus or sugar diabetes is a disease where dogs and cats require insulin to control high blood sugar .For this article I'm only going to be speaking about cats as dogs have a slightly different response to diet and insulin regimes. 

The good news for cat owners is that there are two tools in the toolbox that used together may actually cure about one third of the diabetics. those tools are diet and insulin.

Cats in nature do not eat carbohydrates, they birds, mice and fish. When I see a newly diagnosed diabetic cat the first thing I do is send the owner to the grocery store to pick up some low-carb cat foods. You can find a listing of these foods under Links we Love  on this website, look under low-carb cat food diets and go to that link. The goal is to get 6% carbohydrates are less. This means no  dry food, only canned foods soon to be able to get as low as 6% total calories from carbohydrates. The best dry food seems to be Evo at 7 %.

Most diabetic cats will have blood sugars higher than 300 and normal cats will have blood sugars below 200. Owners can easily measure blood glucose at home by pricking a little vein in the ear and using an inexpensive blood glucose meter that can be purchased at any local pharmacy. Home glucose readings are much more reliable than any vet clinic can measure because adrenaline surges make the sugar go up. Almost all cats get a rush of adrenaline when they come through our doors.

If diet alone does not resolve the high blood sugar it may be necessary to use injectable insulin. Oral hypoglycemic agents don't seem to work well for cats and is much easier to give cats shots than pills. The endocrinologist at UC Davis, Dr. Edward Feldman, once told a large group of veterinarians that the real use of oral hypoglycemic pills is to convince owners it would be easier on them (and their kitties) to just give the cats insulin injections! It turns out all the type I diabetic cats become type II diabetic cats within the year anyway and all type II diabetic cats require insulin.

High blood sugar seems to poison the cat's ability to make insulin. If we catch cats in time before the pancreases totally lost its ability to produce insulin we may be able to "wake the pancreas up" and achieve  a honeymoon, a highly desirable state where the cat no longer needs injectable insulin. That is my goal in every case. The longer the cat has been diabetic the less likely we are to go on a honeymoon.

The best insulin for cats is insulin glargine. We start at an initial dose of two units twice a day and recheck the cat two weeks later to see if it has come down to normal. A third of cases will no longer need insulin, two thirds of them unfortunately areus insulin-dependent for the rest of their lives. 

Complications are common in long-term diabetics and frequent monitoring of urine for infections as well as blood for concomitant problems is a very good idea several times a year.

Most diabetic cats lead normal lives and diabetes is not as bad to treat as most owners think it's going to be.

 If your cat is drinking a lot, eating a lot and urinating a lot it is time to check for diabetes. 

If your cat is fat it is time to lose the weight, preferably on a low-carb diet.

 Let's make it a  resolution for our cats to lose the weight I won't be losing in 2011 and hopefully prevent diabetes mellitus in all my feline patients.