Well, isn’t every Feline Friday a pretty good Friday? Yes, but…maybe I’ll just sidestep the Good Friday stuff and get right to the cats.

This is Mr. Silverman out enjoying the view yesterday afternoon. Just click on Silverman’s picture to see all of today’s feline stars.

And if you happen to be a cat person following our adventure with feline diabetes, you can keep reading for an update on Mr. Silverman’s condition.

It turns out that Silverman is having a more difficult time than Duke. He’s older, probably about 13 years old. We’ve been having to slowly increase his insulin dose and then test the results. Then repeat. So far, we haven’t succeeded in reducing his blood glucose to save levels, and his insulin dosage has continued to increase.

He started out at two units of insulin, twice a day, and slowly increased as indicated by continued testing. When we hit six units, our vet began looking for some other condition that might be causing insulin resistance. For poor Mr. Silverman, that meant major dental work. He lost quite a few teeth in the process, but it didn’t provide the boost we were hoping for.

Last week, I took him back to VCA in Kaneohe for a fructosamine test, which gives a measurement of average blood glucose levels over 2-3 weeks. In Silverman’s case, the news was not good. Despite the hefty doses of insulin, his glucose control was rated “poor.” Not good.

I talked about the situation with our vet. She was very reluctant to raise his dose over the 6 units he was getting, but feels she doesn’t have much choice at this point. After more research that turned up other cases requiring high doses, she decided to move forward. So earlier this week it was bumped up to 7 units, morning and evening.

“After that,” Dr. Sakamoto said, “I just don’t know.”

My general impression is that Silverman has benefited from this latest increase. He seems to be just a little more active and isn’t quite so frantic about food. I guess you can be starving despite eating lots of food due to the diabetes, and that seemed to be where Silverman was headed. Now I’m slightly more optimistic that we can at least stop the continued decline in his condition. But we’re having to prepare ourselves for the worst case.

And so it goes on this Feline Friday.