Is It Possible to Reverse Feline Diabetes?

Tessa, Pica the diabetic cat, and Jackson.

When I stood in Petco last Sunday with my husband waiting for the cashier to ring up the mountain of Fancy Feast we have to buy for our cats (very high in protein, low in carbs), I stared at the pet magazines next to the checkout. Cute cats and dogs of all types and sizes. In a morbid way, I could not help but wonder: What is the point? They are all gonna die. And they will die sooner than later.

If you hope this train of thought gets better, it probably doesn’t. Big dogs live about 10 years, and cats 15 to 20 or so. It’s heartbreaking when they die. Every time a cat who lives with me dies, it’s like a little part of me goes with it. I wonder if I have enough love left in my heart for another cat. And then I adopt another.

We have 3 cats now. My husband says 4 cats is “crazy cat lady,” but JaCi, if you’re reading this, he doesn’t mean YOU. Three cats are a good balance, because there’s one for me, one for my husband and one leftover to cuddle when one of the others goes schitzo. The only problem with that arrangement is I don’t really have a cat. Nobody sits on my lap at night anymore. Tessa, our youngest, runs the house and has declared my husband’s lap her private zone. She’s all elbows, like the Munchkin lollypop kids.

Oh, you could say Jackson is my cat, especially since I flew Southwest to San Diego to meet him at the airport and take him back with me, all in one afternoon. Jackson operates in his own universe, on his own time schedule and reminds more and more of the pigs in Angry Birds. You know how those pigs sit there in a curled up ball smirking at you when you lose. Jackson sits in front of his food bowl that way when it’s empty. He sometimes does “feelies” on my feet at night when I sleep. He doesn’t come close to displaying the type of affection I used to enjoy with my first long-term cat, Ashli, a white Persian, or my second, Brandon the Somali, who lived to be almost 20 before he died from kidney failure.

I guess I’m lucky to have had two great loves in my life and I should stop looking for a third.

Perhaps Ashli and Brandon were special because they were each the sole cat in the house. You might also say Pica is my cat since I drove down to Orange County to get him when we moved to Sacramento in 2002. He was a “throw-away” Ocicat because his coat is marbled and not spotted, no use to the breeder, so she gave him to me. We taught him to cuddle with me at night by feeding him treats. But soon as the treat session was over, bang, zoom, he was outta here.

I’m taking Pica, our sugar cat with feline diabetes, to the vet in Davis this morning because his blood glucose curves have dropped dramatically. He used to register over 450. We ran curves on him last Saturday, and he dropped into the 20s, which is not good. I hope there is nothing else going on with him but it would seem that he does not need insulin now. His levels yesterday without insulin were around 175. Not great, but not too bad. Well, you sign on for the long run when you adopt a pet.

I hope it’s good news and not trading one dibilating disease for another. I have not heard of a cat reversing feline diabetes after a diagnosis but I am hoping for a miracle.