Great news!
A diet change can in fact bring a catās BG back to Earth! 
Also, his peeing and drinking could have been unrelated to diabetes at all. Sometimes, cats develop bladder stones that can be resorbed by using special diets. Maybe your cat was just on the verge of that and the diet change helped! Yay to no more CGM!!
That is awesome news.
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My 11 year old cat Abigail and I are standing at the precipice. One month ago she was her usual goofy, affectionate, energetic self. Now sheās lost a third of her body weight and is very sick. They saw evidence on ultrasound that points to cancer but sheās too sick to undergo biopsy. And now her asthma is also presenting problems. She is at the cat hospital tonight but I know I have to let go of the hope that they could do the biopsy, find something treatable and make her better. What I need to do is bring her home and make her as comfortable as possible until itās time for her to go. I know thatās the best thing for her.
But the situation is complicated by a long awaited week at an Airbnb in the Adirondacks with my brothers and my oldest friend, none of whom I have seen since before the pandemic. Weāre supposed to leave for New York on July 27. How can I leave my dying cat? How can I miss the opportunity to reunite with people important to me?
If they send her home with meds like steroids for the asthma maybe sheāll rally for a bit and Iāll feel ok leaving her with my son. I guess weāll have to see how things go when I get her home.
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I am sorry, this is so stressful!! I just went through something similar with my 17 year old cat. I would guess that the next few days will give you more information and you will have a better idea of what to do.
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An update, should anyone be interested. The surgeon called this morning and said the transfusion and the asthma treatment had caused significant improvement in her condition and surgery was now an option, so what did I want to do? I thought it over and felt comfortable telling him to proceed with surgery. He did and found and removed a mass that he believed has been causing her symptoms. We donāt yet know what the mass is or what it means for her longterm prognosis but just removing it could be therapeutic in the near term.
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Keeping my fingers and toes crossed for your kitty!
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And maybe it will be a comfort to know you did everything you could for her. Crossing fingers this gives you many more years together!
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The Daily podcast is on pet health care today. The upshot is we have more pets, and we spend more money on them and on their health than ever before. We have more medical options to extend their lives, but these are often expensive. Few of us have pet health insurance. (Do any of you? I do not.)
My old lady cat passed away six months ago. She developed hyperthyroidism likely due to a tumor. The vet and I discussed all her options, and she ended up on medication which extended her life several years. She tangled with something, maybe a fox, maybe a raccoon, last year and the vet had to piece her skin back together. She bounced back from that but other systems failed. She was loving and curious until the end. The younger but not young boy cats left behind are pretty healthy so far. One has allergies and so I take him in for shots periodically.
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I think the improvement in pet care can be a slippery slope. I left my vetās office after 17 years because as the practice expanded and new vets were hired, I was disgusted by the guilt trips. Always pushing senior blood work, tests, extra procedures. When my senior cat needed all of his teeth pulled, they wanted me to pay for an echocardiogram because of a barely there heart murmur ( which we all knew was due to his hyperthyroidism)- they were insistent. I went to another vet and they did the extractions (for half the cost) without the $600 test.
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Privare equity has bought up a lot of practices, and that correlates with pushing unneeded tests.
Pet health insurance makes zero sense. Thereās a cap on what they pay out, and if you have more than one pet the premiums are through the roof. Better to self-insure.
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^^These topics are in the podcast.
(It was pretty dog centric, tbh.)
Tests are great, but common sense should not be replaced by testing. Eons ago, when our now semi-blind senior citizen cat was a kitten, she developed some sort of an infection and was barely moving but still had a strong drive to eat. Mr. B took her to the vet. The vet was not sure if the source of her infection was viral or bacterial and suggested a $500 test that would take a week to get results. Mr. B, having worked in the diagnostic industry, asked the vet what the outcome of the test would be. To which the vet responded that a bacterial infection would be treated with an antibiotic, but for a viral one, there would be supportive care only. The viruses tested for would be feline ones, not something that could infect humans. Mr. inquired how much the antibiotic would be. $40! He suggested getting her that and seeing what happens. The cat got a tasty turkey flavored formulation, and she was better in a couple of days. 
Had we waited a week for that expensive test results, she could have expired.
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Bad vet.
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We had something similar with our diabetic cat. We thought she had a urinary tract infection. Honest vet said we could pay for a test that was about $70 to see if she had a UTI, or pay for the shot that was about the same price. (We gave her shots instead of pills bc it was about impossible to get her to take meds).
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I brought Abigail home from the hospital today. She was very disoriented when she got home and didnāt really get that should use the steps we fashioned for her to get on the couch and to the catio. By tonight she has figured out how to use the steps to get on the couch and to the catbox. (I put a temporary cat box on the floor but so far she has chosen not to use it and prefers to use the one in the catio.) There has been much grooming and purring and sitting on my lap. She didnāt much like it when I squirted the pain meds into her mouth but got over it pretty quickly and is now sitting with me on the couch. So really all good news except for the biopsy results pending. But I think weāll just enjoy her recovering from the surgery until we hear.
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Fingers and toes crossed for you and Abigail!
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Just got word from the doc. The lab found no evidence of cancer, just IBD, and just in the one spot. Removing it should solve the problem unless (until?) it crops up somewhere else. Need to speak to an internal med vet about that.
Iām feeling pretty relieved!
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IBD = irritable bowel disease? You may not want to go to such lengths, but I consulted a veterinary nutritionist when my cat had both kidney disease and pancreatitis. I only mention it, because the thought hadnāt crossed my mind until a friend mentioned using one. So I pass the idea along, in case it is helpful.
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ugh and now poor kitty is looking thin again and drinking an excessive amount of water (the signs we had prior to getting the diabetes diagnosis). So Guess back the vet we go!!
Diet hasnāt changed recently so what on earth could be causing this!
Canāt bare to have him shaved again to get the monitor put on so looking to buy something rather then take him to the vet each time to get blood work. I will have to go back and re-read as I think some gave some suggestions on monitors
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