Diabetes in the Family

Like myself, one of my cats (I've got 3 now) has always fought the battle of the bulge. Over the past few years, though, he has made a lot of progress and slimmed down. I put him on Science Diet r/d and was very careful about measuring out his daily dose of food. In fact, all three of my cats have to eat different food, and two of the three have had weight issues, so I have ended up measuring out and putting each cat's food in a jar with her/his name on it every day. They eat what's in the jar, and that's it, except for my one skinny cat who has discovered the benefits of barfing after every meal. I've got food up on a file cabinet for him b/c he's the only one skinny enough to jump up that high.

Unfortunately, my efforts may have not been enough for one of my cats who was just diagnosed with diabetes. Today my husband and I will meet with the vet and learn how to start giving him twice daily injections of insulin. I've done some reading up on it, and I'm pretty prepared for what we will have to do, but I'm afraid my husband is still in La La Land.

We have to feed and give his shots every 12 hours. And that means on the dot, not 12 1/2 hours or 10 hours, but 12. Period. My husband, M., is under the impressions that as long as it's done twice a day we'll be fine. He has this image of us doing it togther, him holding the cat me poking him with the needle. Of course, this is not a realistic picture because due to our work and life demands, mainly work actually, there's no way we will both be around at the same time in 12 hours incriments every single day.

This means we both will need to learn to give the shots solo. I've hinted at this, but I thought it best to just let the doctor drill it into his brain. While I'm not thrilled about giving my cat shots, I've had a lot of experience with older animals and have had to do all kinds of scray stuff to keep them comfortable in their later years. But, I've usually managed to keep M. out of it as much as possible b/c, well, he's a whimp when it comes to this kind of thing. So, I'm really more concerned about dealing with his freaking out (which I expect to happen today) than I am about giving my poor cat shots.