Les Jones

Home Life > Felix the Diabetic Cat

Our cat Felix has diabetes, it turns out. He had been acting funny the last month or so - very listless, and he lost a lot of weight, and drank a lot of water. We took him to the vet last week and they diagnosed him with diabetes. He spent a week at the vet's while they got his glucose levels down to normal.

Melissa bought a FreeStyle electronic glucose monitor when she brought him home from the vet tonight. She read the manual, and then she wanted to try it on herself. She was afraid of the pin prick so I volunteered to be the pincushion. It doesn't hurt at all. It's just the slightest little prick with the tiniest drop of blood. My glucose level was 147 right after dinner. Normal is around 130. Felix was 187. For cats, you get the blood sample through the inside of the outer ear.

Tomorrow we pick up the insulin prescription. The insulin for cats is human insulin, which I thought was interesting. Medical insulin used to be extracted from animals, but now it's mostly produced through genetic engineering. The insulin gene is engineered into the bacterial genome, the bacteria are grown in industrial fermenters, and the cells are harvested and the insulin extracted. Bacterial production is much, much cheaper, and there's less potential for allergic reactions.

Felix will be OK, though this will cut his lifespan short - the vet said we should only expect him to live another two or three years. He's eight now.

Felix is an awesome cat. Super friendly and laid back. Katie loves and abuses him, and he puts up with it without complaint. He was found at the Knoxville Zoo, wound up at the Stray Connection, and that's where Melissa adopted him.

UPDATE: We're going through the test strips pretty quickly. It should be two strips a day, but since we're rookies we're wasting a couple strips a day because we don't have our technique down yet. I just ordered more from Amazon, which has very good prices. Devine and Hocks are a little cheaper, though, and are cheaper still in quantity. Walgreen's on the other hand is about twice as expensive.

Felix is really being great about taking his glucose tests and shots. Since we can't reward him with food we're rewarding him with brushing, which he loves.