It just seems like August has lasted forever. It’s a combination of the boredom of our Covid-restricted lifestyles and worries about the two aged felines sharing our space. And there’s been good reason to worry.
Here’s what happened after I posted last week’s Feline Friday photos.
It was early in the afternoon. I was in the bedroom trying to get one of short 30-40 minute naps. Meda was there, too, although she was reading. And then we heard the sound of a cat throwing up. Cleaning up after the cats is mostly my job, so I opened my eyes, stood up, and followed the sound. When I got to the living room, it was a bad scene. Duke was collapsed on his side, retching, and unable to move out of the way. I recognized it right away. It was another glucose crash, where his blood glucose level crashes to dangerously low, life-threatening levels.
He gets insulin regularly in order to control the typically quite high glucose levels, but over the past two years, has had a series of these unexplained crashes. I carefully lifted him out of the way, and called for Meda to get the bottle of Karo syrup on hand for just such occasions. She poured a bit into a spoon, and I let him lick it off of my finger, and after a few minutes he licked a bit more out of the spoon. Within a relatively short time, probably 10-15 minutes, Duke was able to walk and headed to the kitchen, where I fed him a couple of spoonfuls of canned cat food.
It was another close call. If we hadn’t been home, he could have died.
So I’ve cut his insulin dose in half again, and I’m watching him very carefully. It’s just about exactly a week since this crash, and there hasn’t been a repeat. But looking at my notes, there were similar episodes on August 4, June 15, and April 9. So that’s four in the course of the past five months. Not good.
But Duke and Romeo are still here today. Every day is now an accomplishment.
In today’s photos, you see a couple of Romeo doing his sort of side-saddle eating. Both times, I brought a bowl of food over to where he had been sleeping. Instead of getting up and dealing with it, he just lifts his head just high enough to clear the side of the bowl and starts eating. It looks funny, but it seems to work.
Anyway, Happy Feline Friday to you all!
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Bless you and your felines! It’s scary to manage people and animals with diabetes. Them still being around to give us a joy through your photos is tribute to your love and dedicated care.
??? Sweet buddies! Duke looks a little perky in that pic of him in the kitchen.
Yes. Any hint of food and he wobbles toward the scene! He’s mostly blind. If I try to give him a bite of people food, he can’t see where I’m holding it, and I have to kind of shove it into his mouth while he’s searching around. Poor old guy!
The cat, not me.