Thanks for the update, Kevin. Especially thanks for taking time to post when you clearly have so much on your plate right now. One of your posts a while back with a photo of Hubcat and her laser eyes prompted me to de-lurk, so I credit her for bringing me into this community. I thank her, not blame her for that.

I hope the meds kick in for her. Sickly pets are so pitiful and it’s difficult for those who love them to bear their suffering.

Best wishes and hugs to you and Chris, scritches for sweet Hubcap, and my fingers are crossed for a good result.

Donna

Poor Hubcap. Poor you and Chris! But I too hope that they figure out a way to keep all the problems under control so she can be her old self.

I’m really sorry to hear that.

The good news is that she’s been a ravenous pig through all of this

That is good news.

I sometimes think pets get very ill just to see how much we love them. (Hmmm, $30,000 in vet bills and they’ll still cuddle me after I ate half a Vet. Assistant.)

I was most happy to hear that Hubcap has the pepper to try and kill the staff at the vet.  A good appetite and the ability to become ferocious are great cat health indicators.  Thank you for the good news.

Hurrah for yicky chicken pockets! It’s great when something actually works the way it’s supposed to.

Hubcap sounds like she’s got a few more good maulings in her.

As for the glucose strips, we had to do that for a while. I don’t know about you, but in our surly little Krugman’s case, it involved a bag of gravel.

Mrs. Polly, oddly enough, I hear that the same thing is true of Paul Krugman.

Hang in there, Hubcap, Kevin & Chris!  As long as she’s eating well and acting feisty things are looking good.  You guys have been through a lot and I hope it starts looking up from here!

Kerry,

1. I rate you three cups of coffee on the spit-take scale!

2. Both Krugmans have a certain “outside the box” mentality.

3. And more than a little pissy. Also.

Hi Kev - Like others, I’m really sorry to hear about your and Hubcap’s ordeal. I remember what it felt like having to nurse our old feller. (Right now, the cat who eventually took his place has just woken up in his usual amorous mood and will barely let me type this - “I’m here, PRR PRR, it’s morning(ish) PRRRR PRRRR Oh stuff it, you’re glued to that laptop again. Now what about my foodblowl?”) A good appetite is a definite plus. Hang in there. My master calls.

It’s good to hear she (and you guys!) are hanging in there! I also think ferocity and gluttony are good signs.

I’m sorry, but “furry diarrhea cannon” is the most amusing description I’ve read in some time. Good to see you can keep a sense of humor through the trauma.

As a servant of 4 cats currently and many more in the past I sympathize with your (plural) plight and hope for the best and a full recovery. It’s so difficult treating our beasts because they can’t say “I have a pain right here, doc, and I think it may be caused by…”

Good luck and thanks for the update.

furry diarrhea cannon

Hey, watch what you say about Jonah Goldberg!

Seriously, Kevin, I’m rooting for you and the whole gang. 

(And thanks for the links and kind words….)

Kevin,
I send you my deepest sympathies.  Back in September, my cat Blacula(yes, I know it’s a silly name,feel free to laugh) was diagnosed with kidney failure, he had his leg shaved off & spent three days at the vet having his kidneys cleaned out. After that, my wife and I gave him injections of subcutaneous fluid every other day,and eventually every day. After four months, of this, he stopped eating,so we knew it was time to say goodbye.  We booked an appointment for him to be put down, but he died the night before,which made it easier for me. 

Sounds like you have a good Vet, but I recommend looking into a vet who does home visits.  Home vet care is a lot less stressful for older cats and their owners.  In my case, it only cost about $25 more than a trip to the Vet’s office. 

Best of luck to you & Hubcap

Back in September, my cat Blacula(yes, I know it’s a silly name,feel free to laugh)

Jason, remember, my cat’s name is Hubcap. Heh.  Blacula is a great name. It’s funny, we rarely call her Hubcap (I pinched the name from a crazy car service guy driver who told me that was the name of his dog), but with this illness and constantly having to drop her name at the vets, her name has finally stuck (Chris disagrees, but she is clearly wrong).

Yeah, we need to worry about her quality of life and if we think this latest round of medications isn’t working, we have to be realistic about continuing treatment.  Every trip to the vets is incredibly stressful for her (not to mention us) and as I noted, her heart failure is rare (our next step would be a cardiologist) and she’s over fifteen years old (although, as you may be able to tell from the picture, she doesn’t look it at all). We considered the home care option, but I believe it was $60 more and we’ve already spent what I think is nearing or maybe more than $2000 since she first fell ill. Maybe I should pull that stunt that those folks did with an alleged sick cat at PUMA Pac and go over there and beg for donations (under an alias, of course).

Once again, thanks for all of the good thoughts and support, folks. Hubcap is looking pretty good this morning (aside from the missing hair).  I think draining all of that fluid from around her lungs helped a lot, not to mention how therapeutic it probably was for her to remove a large chunk from the thumb of the doctor who gave her the echocardiogram.

Kevin, one thing we did for our diabetic dog was put him on a fat free diet. He had some other stuff going on to cause his response to insulin to be erratic. He stabilized quite well after that.

I wonder if they make those urine sticks for dogs. Sticking him for blood gets really old, really fast.

Best of luck to you and Hubcap.

Kevin, one thing we did for our diabetic dog was put him on a fat free diet. He had some other stuff going on to cause his response to insulin to be erratic. He stabilized quite well after that.

Len, yeah, they put her on a new diet for the diabetes (Purina Dietary Management—wet and dry).

I wonder if they make those urine sticks for dogs. Sticking him for blood gets really old, really fast.

We use a human glucose meter, but the sticks are calibrated for dogs. I have also learned that they become notoriously inaccurate at high readings. I would imagine trying to get a sample from a cat would result in samples being provided by whoever tried though.

We’ve got the pooch on Science Diet Prescription WD. It comes in both wet and dry.

He’s a Schnauzer, which frequently have a lot of gall bladder problems. Even though he was on a stable insulin dose how he handled it on a daily basis was pretty haphazard. Once we changed the food and such he stabilized.

He’s on Humulin N, which is a slow release insulin. We tried to go to R, but we couldn’t get him to eat three times a day.

Every now and then he has a bad day. You can tell when he really just lays around all day. On those days sometimes it’s hard to get him to start eating (but he does fine once he starts). We’ve found that if we give him a small portion of his mealtime dose about 10 minutes before he eats he seems to do much better.

We even went as far as taking him to a specialist (last years bill was over $6k). She explained to me that diabetes in animals is a bitch to treat because humans can use up to three types of insulin to manage their diabetes, but those choices weren’t available for humans.

I’ve also noticed that the insulin is very sensitive, that rolling the bottle thing instead of shaking is really important. More than once we’ve dumped the insulin and gotten fresh when it seem to not be effective.

Oh, one other thing. If Hubcap is on a human insulin it’s cheaper to buy it at the pharmacy over the counter rather than by prescription.

Aw, poor Hubcap.  My previous cat became diabetic too, and it really wasn’t very fun, either for me or him.  He did pretty well for a year or two on the twice-daily insulin shots and special food, but eventually it got to the point where we couldn’t control it any more, and the vet recommended euthanasia.

KK—God bless you for being the best Dad you can.

Best wishes from me and “Team Jester”—Zip, Zero, William James, TJ, Ghost and Dodger II.

It sucks to be the Big Ape with the Can Opener Who Makes the Tough Decisions, but you’re doing everything just right.

So sorry to hear about the kitty, Kevin. Hang in there.

I imagine Hubcap would be singing this song with this arrangement ...

Good to hear Hubcap is doing better, Kevin.

I can totally sympathize about the vet anxiety.  When my childhood dog Ziggy got into her dotage she started fainting in the car on the way to the vet. 

The first time it happened I truly thought she was dead - her eyes literally rolled back in her head and she melted like a noodle, clonking her head on the window. We had to carry her into the clinic and they did an EKG which turned up nothing, so we just assumed it was stress.

She lived to the ripe old age of 16, which is ancient for a Shepherd-Collie mix.

I hope things are going as well as they can. Diabetes isn’t something we’ve had to deal with but my cats and I know medical treatment too well.

I have my fingers, toes, eyes, and wires crossed for you and Hubcap. What a beautiful animal.