Duchess is diabetic again

[cjsmith]

Well, dang. Here we go again: Duchess is diabetic. Her remission didn't last long! Poor kitty. (Poor my wallet.)

Well, ok, maybe Duchess wouldn't be unhappy if she understood the news. This will mean kitty treats twice a day.

Comments

[shadopanther.livejournal.com]

Sorry to hear that. Poor Duchess & your wallet.

Good luck with the treatments!

Here, my mother's cat, Shadow is on a diet. She gets special cat food carefully doled out in small handfuls though-out the day and meows for more anytime anyone is in the kitchen. I think she needs more exercise. I have happily gotten her to pounce on her ball in the plastic donut and occasionally played chase-the-cat (with her starting it) around a few chairs (which is far from the all over the house Natasha would do).

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I hope I can keep it managed well. She's got enough natural lifespan left that I worry about the long-term effects of the diabetes.

Like Shadow, Duchess badly needs exercise. I wonder if it's time to start letting her out. I keep waffling on this. Keeping them indoors has been, so far, very very unhealthy for them.

[shadopanther.livejournal.com]

I used to always have indoor-outdoor cats. For about the last 10 years I've had just indoor-only cats. My late cat Bandit prompted this by being scared of the outside & not going out much. (I think Bandit got scared as a kitten by the neighbor's dog & her litter-mate scared by the same dog getting lost for 4 days. The litter-mate, however, still enjoyed going outdoors even after being found in a neighbor's garage 4 days later.) Other conditions around the houses I've lived at in the last 10 years have also contributed: busy street, holes in the back fence, back fence being the soundwall to highway 880.

Shadow grew up with Bandit and only tentatively goes outside a couple yards. If she were more of an indoor-outdoor cat, she'd also have to deal with the busy street here. (We've lost 2 cats and 1 kitten to that street & yet we've had 3-4 cats that have lived 'till other ailments took them in-spite of going outside here.) I think ideally I'd either live in a place that had a good chunk of open space (away from busy streets) in which to let the cat out or I'd have an enclosed atrium or screen porch with plants to let the cats out into.

How old is Duchess? We think Shadow is about 7 and we know Natasha is 5. Natasha is much more active than Shadow. It's like Shadow is "She Who Must Be Fed" and Natasha is "She Who Must Be Played With". It's because of Shadow's wanting to eat all the time that I've recently started calling Shadow "Hobbit Cat" for Hobbits' mealtimes of "breakfast, second breakfast, elevensies" and so on.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't think where I live is at all ideal for outdoor cats. I'm too close to Homestead, and in a previous apartment I lost a cat to a crazy neighbor. No one could PROVE he trapped and killed other people's pets, but the whole neighborhood knew it.

Duchess is about thirteen. Thirteen and lazy. :-)

cat play with minimal movement on the human's part

[shadopanther.livejournal.com]

Another couple of thoughts:
1. Does Duchess like laser pointers? Chasing the little red dot from the laser pointer can be great exercise and fun for cats that like 'em. (Natasha liked it for a while until she figured out the dot was coming from the pointer then she just looks at the pointer.) Bonus is that you can sit & not have to move around while playing with the cat.

2. How about strings? Is she good with chasing string? One of Natasha's favorite games was chase the string around on the bed, pouncing over and hiding behind lumps in the quilt. An advantage of this vs. the traditional drag the string around the house is that one can stand in one place while moving the string (shoelace) around the bed. [One caution: For some cats string-play must be supervised. Natasha doesn't have a problem, but Shadow does: Shadow tries to eat the string slurping it up like Spaghetti which would be very bad for her.]

Re: cat play with minimal movement on the human's part

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

*laughter* Yes, Duchess looks at the pointer! I joke that she's dumb, because she's so darn good-natured, but she's actually one of the smarter cats.

She likes feathers on a string. I should make a point of spending more time doing that stuff.