Old Acquaintance Ne'er Forgot

I was able to renew my acquaintance with Adah on the weekend. Once a month, the rescue-group of which I am part, the Lethbridge PAW Society, has a ‘show-and-tell’ event at a local pet-supply shop at which we feature a cat who is available for adoption. This time, Adah and her foster-sibling, Flint, were in attendance. While neither feline was at his or her best - it can be a bit stressful for some, while others shrug off the occasion - I was glad to see Adah again.

For those who don’t know, I found Adah behind my work-place the day she was born. She and her two siblings, whom I call brothers for convenience, were being nursed, on open pavement, by their mother, who was far too young to care for the kittens. Left unattended, the kittens were vulnerable, so I placed them in a box with a sweater as a mattress; their mother watched this done and later returned to them. The next day, though, I discovered two of the kittens on the pavement in the hot sun. One, whom I named Seraph, had already died; the other, Jacob, passed away soon after. The third, whom I called Esau (the mother was a cat we thought was one we had named Rebecca, but it turned out not to be), was in the shade and screaming his head off. Clearly the mother was not capable of looking after the little survivor. Another cat, Miss Mew, was living with a family and had just lost all her kittens; she had milk to spare. Esau was rushed to her and Miss Mew raised him as her own (along with four other orphans). Soon we learned that Esau was a girl, and so she was re-named Adah.

Adah has been in foster-care since. While she is content and devoted to her foster-mum, she remains one of those cats who should have been adopted long ago. She is very friendly to people, and a good companion to every feline who will let her.

She is a bit of a top-cat, but not aggressively so. She has recently been helping a few new cats adjust to foster-life. She was cosy with one of the formerly feral youngsters we have tamed, and last week a fully socialised five-month old was abandoned and taken in by our group. She has bad dreams and cries in her sleep; during one episode, Adah hurried over and started licking the newcomer’s ears and face.

Who could not want to adopt such a cat?

As Close as Fuzz on a Peach

Raleigh is an odd cat. While he will react to other felines, almost always in a friendly fashion, he doesn’t seem to think that he himself will elicit any response from others. He has no sense of another cat’s personal space.

I woke up in the night during the weekend to violent growls and hisses from Cammie. Turning on the light, I saw that she had climbed to the top of one of the bedroom cat-trees; the air outside was warmer than usual that evening, and the window was open. This had attracted my blind princess, and she had ascended to sniff the fragrances of the outside. It had also lured Raleigh. The Peach was calmly crouched beside Cammie, a bewildered expression on his face, his innocent mind unable to grasp that she was enraged at his proximity. Because of Cammie’s sightlessness, I had to urge Raleigh down, so that Cammie could make her retreat.

Raleigh has attempted friendship with Renn and with Neville, but neither of those fellows seem to find the idea appealing. This does not affect Raleigh’s position or passage next to them, or next to any other of the beasts. He will squat beside anyone, trot by, and in one or two cases, over, others, without regard for their presence. If, as sometimes happens, Tucker will whap at Raleigh, the latter will move away; the next time, he will walk just as close, oblivious to the previous whapping.

Peachy carries this characteristic to interaction with me, as well. Once he trusted me enough to approach (and I still need to be slow in my physical contact with him), he had no problem with putting his face as close as possible to mine, a level of comfort not always seen in cats.

The cats of the Cosy Apartment have generally been very conscious of each other and, unfortunately, rather stand-offish. If they lie next to each other, it is accidental, and one or another is probably too lazy to move after getting comfortable. They will sniff each other now and then (especially Renn, with that big nose of his), but being in the same location at the same time is not something any of them relish. Yet to Raleigh, it matters not.

How did he decide on this? Was he raised in great closeness with other cats? Did this behaviour develop after he had been lost or abandoned? His is a very gentle nature; he wants no trouble from anyone and wants to give it to none. I’ve seen him whap - and that in self-defence - only once (when Renn’s sniffing grew too invasive). Otherwise, he has been more of a pacifist than Josie. It’s a character I wouldn’t mind seeing my other beasts adopt. But I would still like to know how it came to be.

The Grey Puzzle

Neville is proving a bit of a puzzle. Not only has his diabetes resurged, but it is deciding not to be greatly affected by the insulin I am giving him. For a week, I gave him one unit a day, increasing to one twice a day. That did not make a great dent in his numbers. I have since put his dosage up to two units twice a day, once in the morning, and once in the evening.

While I was gratified to see his initial reading in the morning (before insulin) had decreased to 15.0, six hours later, after receiving two units of his medicine, it had dropped to only 14.4. This is mysterious to me, as such an amount of insulin should have had a greater influence.

I won’t put up his dosage again, as I don’t favour endlessly increasing an amount in the face of small effects. I believe the insulin (from a different source than his first) is lowering his blood-sugar reading, but the amount is enigmatically small; I still do not believe he is insulin-resistant. My intention is to continue his current dosage (two units twice a day) for a couple of weeks, reading his numbers periodically, to see what a longer-term programme does to them.

I am reluctant to take Neville to the doctor for this, because of the stress he would undoubtedly feel, and the fact that I would in likelihood receive a prescription very similar to what I am doing now: having started with a small dosage of insulin, raising it a little but not greatly, and seeing what happens on that amount. There is a possibility of course that the doctor would find something else wrong with Neville, but I see no other worrisome signs in him. I will watch for any warnings; even if I see none, I may take him to the veterinary if we have no adequate response from his new insulin dosage.

In the meanwhile, Nevsky is not happy, thinking that I am coming to stab his ears every time I approach him. He has not, even though he has been in the Cosy Apartment since September, really reconciled himself to being here, or to me. I think he prefers it to his previous setting, but I don’t believe he is pleased to be here. I hope that this is just a matter of time.

Sable?

I have not seen Sable and her sister, Sablette, for a long time. These two all-black cats used to come rather frequently, if not regularly, to eat from the food-bowl I maintain for outsider-cats. When I would see them, I would feed them soft-food, as well, often enough for them to start asking for it when they came to visit. Then, they stopped coming. I feared something had happened to them.

Last night, a single black cat showed up at the edge of my ‘patio’, the concrete ditch beyond my outside door. She - I use the feminine pronoun for convenience - was skittish, but came to eat soft-food from a dish when I placed one on the ground. She was hungry: she ate half a three-ounce tin of Fancy Feast, then the rest of it. She cleaned her bowl but remained close at hand, so I emptied the remains of a tin of Merrick (about three more ounces) that no one inside had wanted. She was eating that when I went to bed, being already thirty minutes late for sleep. (Forgive the poor quality of the photo; it was taken in minimal light between courses served to my visitor.)

This morning, it had snowed, and a thick layer of precipitation lie on the ground. The bowl was covered in snow, but had been previously licked clean. Whoever she was, she had been hungry. There was no other sign of her.

Was she Sable? This one was less confident than I remember Sable, so it may have been Sablette, the more timid sister. But if Sable had lost her sister, or had suffered some other trauma since I had last seen her, who knows how she would now behave. Then again, it may have been a different cat all together. I will ask my neighbours if they have observed this cat, and who they may think she is. If she is Sable or Sablette, where has she been all this time, and what happened to her sibling? If not, who is she?

The most I can assert for sure is that she had a good meal, perhaps for the first time in a while.

Better and a Little Easier

My foster-cat Neville gave me some good news last night, though not initially. At six o’clock, I tested his blood-glucose and found it at 20.0. For a cat who lived with it between four and eight for the final third of 2019, that is very high. But I  injected him with one unit of glargine, the same insulin that Tucker receives, and by 10.30, his number was a more satisfactory 13.0. That is hardly what I want, but compared to the higher number, it is what I will take. And in fact, I suspect his nadir (the lowest the ‘curve’ of his blood-sugar will reach before it begins climbing again) is actually lower, but I had to get to bed at some point. Tucker’s nadir is usually four and a half hours after his injection, but most cats’ are later. Come the weekend, I will test Neville more toward midnight.

Also on the weekend, I will test his blood in the morning. If it is, as I suspect, high then too, I will consider a unit of insulin twice a day. And once the testing is over, he will have nothing more to dread from poking and prodding except the daily injections, which, considering where they are given and the thinness of the needles, are hardly to be felt. I will of course perform ‘curves’ on him, as I do with Tucker, but that is an ordeal only monthly.

I appreciate the good thoughts and hopes given Neville by the readers of this blog, and word of their experiences, too. Roberta’s message that her Jeremy went for four years without insulin before requiring it again, while undoubtedly disheartening for her and Jeremy, did show me that this phenomenon can occur, and that it is not isolated to my boy.

So Nev begins again. With the right dosage of insulin at the right times, he may yet free himself of the need for medicine. If not, he will have relief from the effects of diabetes for as long as he needs it.

Good But Not Easy

Well, my programme to start Neville on insulin again to lower his blood-sugar levels has hit a snag. The insulin isn’t working.

I measured his glucose level at six o’clock Sunday morning and found it to be 15.2. This is not dangerously high but of course it is too high for health. I wanted to give him his dose in the evening so that I could check his blood some hours later, to judge its effect. At six p.m., his number was 15.1. I administered a single unit of insulin and measured Nevsky’s blood at 10.30, close to my bed-time. It was 15.1.

I have been adept at counting for some years, so I immediately knew that this number was the same as the one four and a half hours earlier…

This was disappointing, and a little puzzling. The insulin should have had an effect, even a small amount such as one unit. However, I recalled that when I took Neville in, and was given a couple of insulin vials by his previous care-giver, she had said that one of the vials had been accidentally left out of the refrigerator for some hours. Insulin needs to be kept chilled to stay potent. Naturally, at the cost of insulin, one doesn’t want to throw any out, so I kept both vials, not sure whether the amount of time one had been left uncooled would have ruined it. I don’t think I have had to give Nev any insulin since his second arrival. (He came to stay with me for a week prior to when his long-term fostering began, and it was during that week that I had injected him with insulin, but at no time after.)

Now I think I know that the insulin left out of the refrigerator is ruined. That is the likeliest explanation for the complete lack of change after his injection. There is a chance that Neville has become insulin-resistant, though, since he hasn’t had any since September, that is improbable; from what I understand, such resistance comes after prolonged exposure to the drug.

I do have options. I have a second vial of the same kind of insulin (ProZinc). This is insulin made specifically for cats, and has been very successful in treating feline diabetes. It is also expensive, and the cheapest outlet is a town some distance away. While picking up the insulin there is practicable now, if I need to do it myself, I could have difficulties; even with someone else in the rescue-group collecting it, it is inconvenient at best. The insulin that Tucker uses, Glargine, works very well but is not specifically for cats; it is less expensive than ProZinc, and its source much more conveniently placed. Either way, I will try a different container of insulin and see how Neville’s numbers react to it.

The poor guy is still quite upset by having to give blood. The actual sampling is smooth: once he is in place, he remains still and poking him causes minimal movement. He nonetheless dislikes it. I was therefore hoping to reduce the number of times I had to stab him by achieving a good measure of the insulin’s effect. Now, that will have to be done again.

Even when life is good for a cat, it’s not always easy.

Reluctant Patient, Reluctant Doctor

The frustrating nature of diabetes has once again been brought to my attention. Neville came to stay with me on a foster-basis last September, and, though he received insulin for his diabetes, it was a short time before it went into remission. Random tests of his blood-sugar soon revealed numbers between four and eight, the perfect range.

Now, however, he is registering numbers in the teens. A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that Nevsky was a little off his food, and was choosing spots in which to snooze that were out of the way. He was not hiding all the time, and continued to play. But I thought I should take a look at his blood-sugar again, as it may have been a higher number that was influencing his behaviour. Two tests, a couple of days apart, resulted in numbers between 14 and 15. Today, it was 17.1.

I cannot account for the rise in numbers. He is eating a new food, as he seemed to have become bored with his previous soft-food. This variety, however, has, according to my research, the proportion of carbohydrate low enough for a diabetic’s good health. (Any percentage under ten is acceptable.) There was also the fact that we have been suffering from very high winds for a long run of days; I thought that they may have been causing stress, and elevating Nev’s numbers. That hypothesis reflected, admittedly, an outside chance.

I have begun giving Neville a single unit of insulin once a day, in the evening. I started today; tomorrow I will test him again; it won’t be a full ‘curve’ of bi-hourly sampling, but I will poke his ears at six o’clock tomorrow morning, then at mid-day and, finally, just before his insulin – if it is needed – in the evening. I want to see a good curve. Perhaps after a few weeks of this, hopefully less, his system will re-adjust itself to what it was. In the meantime, the poor fellow will have to accustom himself to some daily jabs.

Neville is still a slender mancat, though no longer the Thin Man he once was. That would make injecting him by syringe easier, if his fur, now much longer than it was when I used to give him insulin, did not make finding his skin under it all difficult. In many ways, he can be impatient; in receiving injections, however, he is a good patient, and I am grateful for that.

I would be even more grateful if he need not be a patient at all.