Toby's Home

Does he really have diabetes? I don't know now. His level was 300, when tested in his urine, but an hour later, when his bloodwork was done, different machine, it was at a completely normal level and so was every other function tested. The first machine used, on his urine, has an alleged variance to accuracy of 30 points. Many cats, under stress,have exhibited urine sugar levels as high as 280.

He had a physical exam, which showed nothing abnormal and a full body x-ray which showed nothing out of the ordinary.

He has not had other signs of diabetes like excessive thirst and excessive urination or excessive appetite.

I am more confused than ever. He is supposed to be retested in two days and in the meantime, is on DM for diabetic cats, a wet food I must force feed because he is still not eating or drinking.


However, I have been reading up on diabetes in cats. Diabetes Insipidis is rare but when diagnosed, almost always it is in male kittens. It is a pituatary problem. And yet, he had no symptoms of that disease either, i.e. excessive thirst and drinking a lot of water.

Toby was not severely dehydrated. He just won't eat.

Great article, Judith. Thanks for the link. Sure describes his symptoms, except he was not drinking excessive amounts of water nor urinating large amounts. But then I did not have eyes on him all the time.

The interesting thing was, when he first crashed, I e-mailed the Neuterscooter vet for advice. It was the weekend. From her iphone, she gave me a list of differential diagnoses and one of them, due to the way he was walking and I sent her a video clip of that, was diabetes. She is going to put out an alert on her Neuterscooter list, which includes anyone who has ever attended a clinic with cats, volunteered or invited her to put on a clinic, in hopes of finding someone who might take in Toby, and have the means to care for him, which I don't have.

I do not think Toby is going to survive. He could have Cushings, which means he either has a pituatary tumor or adrenal gland tumor. He could even have FIP, which can have all the neurological symptoms he has and cause glucose in his urine. Toxoplasmosis, same thing. He could have liver damage, although his liver function tests were all normal. To have Cushings as a cat is pretty much a death sentence, although in some cats Cushings seems to spontaneously resolve, I read on one site. Cushings can be sudden onset in young cats, I also read and is most often discovered in trying to treat a diabetic cat with widely flunctuating glucose levels. It is exceedingly difficult to treat in cats because cats produce excess glucose and corticol steroids in response to stress, like even the stress of a vet clinic.

I have a theory. I think he's been under stress since he was born. Going to that Wilsonville fosterer, then back here, having his mom turn on him, being adopted out with his mom, coming back here, and finally, to be attacked and harrassed by my asshole cats here. I wonder if he would recover if he had a quiet stress free place to call home forever. He might just be producing stress hormones constantly now, which would give him all the symptoms of Cushings. I had a human friend who that happened to, the constant stress of running a business turned her into a Cushings patient. She now has to take replacement hormones but maybe it isn't too late for Toby. He needs out of here and in a stress free place to have a chance, given my theory has any merit.