My elderly cat has bad liver and now diabetes?
Is there anything I can do to help it using diet or natural remedies or homeopathy etc
There are prescription diets for diabetes. Like Hills Prescription Diet.
They are low in carbohydrates which is what your cat needs. Or Royal Canin do a diabetic cat biscuit that can be bought on line. Or Bozita which is high in protein.
It is best to try to stick to high protein foods as many cat foods are more than 50% grain and this is not a natural diet for a cat and can cause diabetes from the excess sugar caused by the grains.
Cats often hover on the borderline of diabetes and diet can often help them from becoming full scale diabetics.
Also to feed little and often to prevent sugar spikes is a good idea.
I cured my cat of diabetes with diet alone and feeding little and often. My vet suggested I tried this before going down the tablet or injection path and it worked really well.
You can get some urine strips from your vets to test his wee each day so you will know whether the diet is having the desired affect.
For the liver use Milk Thistle. If you live in the US you can buy a product called Milk Thistle For Cats from Petwellbeing.com.
http://www.petwellbeing.com/cat-liver-disease-p64.cfm
If you live in UK you can buy Milk Thistle in liquid form from www.baldwins.co.uk. 2 drops on the cats food twice daily.
December 26 2009 02:26 pm | Diabetes natural remedies
December 26th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
didnt your vet give you any suggestions?
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December 26th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
This makes me so sad
I would really look into diet and natural remedies
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December 26th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Ask your vet. If you are in UK then the Cats Protection League might have some information for you.
I understand how you must feel. Wish there was more help I could give you.
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December 26th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
There are a few diets on the market that claim to help keeping blood sugar level. If it doesn’t work you may have to give insulin injections twice a day but its not that bad. My dog has diabetes and once we got her insulin dose correct is was really easy keeping it level and she has lived months happily with it.
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December 26th, 2009 at 9:59 pm
I’m sure there are but I’m not qualified to advise you, especially without further details.
You can start learning here about diabetes: http://www.catnutrition.org/diabetes.php
There are Yahoo groups you can join where you can also learn more and get support from other members in the same position.
As for the liver problems, I don’t know.
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December 26th, 2009 at 10:18 pm
There are prescription diets for diabetes. Like Hills Prescription Diet.
They are low in carbohydrates which is what your cat needs. Or Royal Canin do a diabetic cat biscuit that can be bought on line. Or Bozita which is high in protein.
It is best to try to stick to high protein foods as many cat foods are more than 50% grain and this is not a natural diet for a cat and can cause diabetes from the excess sugar caused by the grains.
Cats often hover on the borderline of diabetes and diet can often help them from becoming full scale diabetics.
Also to feed little and often to prevent sugar spikes is a good idea.
I cured my cat of diabetes with diet alone and feeding little and often. My vet suggested I tried this before going down the tablet or injection path and it worked really well.
You can get some urine strips from your vets to test his wee each day so you will know whether the diet is having the desired affect.
For the liver use Milk Thistle. If you live in the US you can buy a product called Milk Thistle For Cats from Petwellbeing.com.
http://www.petwellbeing.com/cat-liver-disease-p64.cfm
If you live in UK you can buy Milk Thistle in liquid form from http://www.baldwins.co.uk. 2 drops on the cats food twice daily.
References :
December 26th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
I had a diabetic cat. I would be really careful in giving ‘natural remedies’ as you don’t want to interfere with the liver and other complications of managing the problem.
When it comes to diet, your vet may suggest you use the Royal Canin diabetic diet which is a high fibre diet and releases sugars very slowly. What you are trying to do is keep the blood sugar level as constant as possible so that it doesn’t go from one extreme to the other.
What is much more important though is that if you are giving insulin you understand exactly what you are doing. It is much harder to control in cats than dogs for example because they are much fussier about how much they eat and when. If you are giving it, then someone needs to be around to watch over the cat for at least 4 hours after the injection in case he has a hypo and needs to be given sugar therapy to stop him going into a diabetic coma.
There is one possible comfort. Quite often cats do improve after having insulin treatment and you may eventually be able to stop giving it. My cat had it for 18 months and then we were able to stop giving it to him as his blood sugar stabilised near normal.
But I can’t emphasise this enough – take care with the treatment and use a good diet, these are the only ways to manage diabetes.
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December 26th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
I am so sorry this makes me really sad, but I think you should check out some sites or talk to a local vet, or a cat clinic into changing the cat’s diet for a more healthier cause. I’m almost 100% positive that changing his or her diet will not only make him/her healthier but it will really help it’s liver. But if you haven’t already you should really look into asking your vet for vetsulin it will help with the diabetes.
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December 26th, 2009 at 10:41 pm
Yep. Lots of options! And fortunatly diet is the easiest one.
I would HIGHLY recommend a Raw diet for your cat. Many cats are no longer insulin dependant once they are fed a species appropriate diet. Considering the diabetes was probably caused by feeding a species inappropriate diet of dry food to the cat for its entire life, a new appropriate diet is a good place to start!
Here are some good places to start your research.
http://www.catinfo.org/felinediabetes.htm
http://felinediabetes.com/
http://www.yourdiabeticcat.com/
http://www.mypetcarnivore.com/feline_diabetes_mellitus.htm
http://www.catnutrition.org
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