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Hawaiian Crabbing Feast and the Sacramento Cat Puke Report
Tree and blue sky on Hapuna Beach is a calming influence
I find it astonishing how easy it is to adjust to the time zone in Hawaii, which is 3 hours earlier than Sacramento in the summer. Whenever I travel, I struggle with time-zone changes because it’s very hard to adapt. It’s as though my body is in tune here. I can retire in the evening at my regular time and get up around 7 AM, sometimes even 7:30, with no problem, just in time for the Sacramento Cat Puke Report. My husband is caring for the cats while I’m off galavanting on the beach for Labor Day.
Pica, our ocicat, seems to have developed exocrine pancreatic insufficiency. For a while, we thought he had reversed feline diabetes, but after a few weeks without insulin, his blood sugar numbers shot way up, and he is still losing weight, despite PZI (insulin). He is so thin that it’s apparently difficult for him to bend over to eat out of his bowl; he’s been using his front paw to shovel food into his mouth, so my husband has elevated his dishes. This particular condition happens in cats when they ferociously eat but receive no nutrition. It’s a maldigestion syndrome, and we won’t have the blood results back until Wednesday to confirm but he has all of the signs.
Even then, it appears our vet at Midtown Animal Clinic does not carry the enzyme powder we will have to add to his food. We are hoping our specialist vet in Roseville will have it in stock. Pica used to weigh 15 pounds, and he is now down to 10 pounds, 10 ounces. That’s a big drop in weight. Imagine what it would be like if you were always hungry, starving, despite how much you eat.
Crabbing at the Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel
Not that I showed any restraint last night at the Crabfest held at my hotel on the Big Island. It was all you can eat buffet. I started out well, with a salad, topped by marinated artichokes, mushrooms, alfalfa sprouts, cukes, tomatoes but added a few snow crab claws to it, and before I knew it, I had finished two plates of steaming King crab legs dipped into drawn butter.
My server, Donna, brought me the bill, and it was under $100, which included 2 small glasses of champagne. I leaned over to confide to her: You know, there is only one thing I like better than crab legs. That’s lobster. And tonight, there is a Lobsterfest going on at the hotel next door.
Just a few seconds ago, my husband sent me an email: Have your cats puked on anything irreplaceable? Find out tonight at 11 on the #KCRACatPukeNews. Pica performs the Circle Puke for us at least once a week or so, but at least it’s cat puke on a flat, cleanable surface as he spins a 360, leaving small puddles. I hope you’re not eating lunch right now. Readers with cats will understand. You do what you have to do when you sign on to care for cats.
Photo: Tree on Hapuna Beach, by Elizabeth Weintraub
Feline Diabetes and Pancreatitis and Lost Diaries
One of the good things about blogging is I have documentation of my life; it’s almost like keeping a diary of when stuff happened so I can look it up — like when Pica, our cat began insulin shots. I lost my diary that I kept since 1974, and I don’t know where it ended up. The last time I remember updating that diary was in the early 1990s. I imagine some ex-boyfriend or jilted fiance stole it and then burned it with glee in a bonfire.
At one point, somewhere in the late 1980s, I began storing my diary on my computer and diligently transferred the data file from one system to another. From my early IBM with 5-inch floppy disks, to my Compaq portable to finally Mac Powerbooks in the early 1990s. I found some old disks and bought a reader but could not find my diary on any of it. It’s coded under some name that I thought was clever at the time and now I can’t recall the file name at all. I even sent off a ZIP 100 to be converted into a CD, but the diary wasn’t on it either.
It’s a big disappointment for me because that was something I thought I would keep into my old age to recall my youth, and it’s gone.
After I’m dead, I imagine my husband won’t keep my website alive either, so I’ll probably have to sell the business to another Sacramento REALTOR before that happens so my website will always remain online. Or at least for another 50 years.
This morning, after taking care of a few real estate issues for my clients, we’re heading off over the Causeway to Davis to take Pica back to the vet. Since November, we’ve increased his insulin dosage in steps from 1 unit, to 2 units, to 3 units and now we’re on 4 units. His blood glucose curves are not behaving the way the doctor feels they should move and are still too high. New blood tests done earlier this week have resulted in an additional diagnosis of pancreatitis. They don’t know, apparently, if feline diabetes causes pancreatitis or if pancreatitis leads to feline diabetes, according to our vet.
This means we have to start SubQ fluids every other day, along with giving Pica a 1/2 tab of SAM-E daily. He’s lost so much weight (more than 3 pounds) that his hipbones are sticking out. He eats like a cow and urinates like a Sacramento rainstorm. I’m lucky to have a partner in life, so there are two of us to care for Pica. Can’t focus on the past when we have the present in which to live.
When the Vet Says Your Cat Has Feline Diabetes
To the extent that I’m familiar with Type 2 Diabetes is only what I read when my doctor mentioned how I seemed headed in that direction. Lots of people over 60 are diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes but what I wasn’t acutely aware of is so are cats as they move into their senior years. For me, I radically changed my diet, lost a ton of weight and I maintain a regular exercise program; and I’m no longer at risk. For our cat, Pica, well, he is not quite so fortunate. He has Type 2 feline diabetes.
I feel very guilty about his feline diabetes diagnosis. We just heard the news from his vet. Although some cats are prone, others develop diabetes due to a steady diet of dry cat food. Dry cat food is not healthful food for a cat, which I didn’t fully realize. I read what a renowned veterinarian had to say on the subject on the About.com cats website, and I personally know the Cats Expert Fanny, so if she says a cat should not eat dry cat food, I trust her. The vet she quoted on her website, of all things, turns out to be the vet / breeder from Orange County who raised Pica to the age of 4 months before we adopted him. It’s a small world. Pica’s breeder warned me, too, and gave me a long lecture, but I didn’t pay attention.
I thought what the hey, all cats eat dry cat food and I’ve never a problem. What do the experts know?
They know enough not to feed your cat dry cat food.
It’s like crunchy little french fries, filled with fat, calories and carbohydrates. Cats really need meat. As second choice, high protein canned or pouched food without additives or fillers like corn, wheat, vegetables or fruit. It’s just a lot more convenient to feed them dry food, which is why people do it. Less expensive, too. But times change.
My husband and I are going to the vet’s offices tonight to learn how to give Pica insulin injections twice a day. The silver lining, if there is such a thing, is if feline diabetes has to happen to any of our 3 cats, at least it is our most affectionate and docile. It should not be difficult to give him a shot. It will be harder on us, I imagine, than on Pica. We will also monitor his blood glucose by pricking his ear every few hours and testing his blood. Insulin is expensive, too.
Among our 3 cats, the two Ocicats and our Ragdoll Jackson, it is Jackson who does not want to eat canned cat food or the raw meat. He is on strike. We have since discarded all of the dry cat food and crunchy carbohydrate treats. We’re running a tight ship at the Weintraub house. I mention all of this in case you have cats at home. You might to reconsider their diet and read about how diet can lead to Type 2 Diabetes in Felines. I’d like to save you the sorrow and guilt, if I can.
It’s just a good thing that I sell real estate in Sacramento in such a manner that I generally am not away from my home office for more than a few hours at a time. I don’t know how people manage caring for cats with feline diabetes who are gone all day; my heart goes out to all caregivers of diabetic cats. I wish it weren’t so. But this is what we sign on for with pets.
