Cancers and Diabetes

[nena10]

I watch a vet show on tv and I see alot of cases were dogs and cats get cancer and diabetes. How can we protect them against these diseases? Doesn't diabetes come with too much sugar? I have never known you could feed sugars to animals. Not many products on the market have sweet stuff. Just meat and vegetable products. So, how can they get them. If my pets ever get these things, I don't know how to deal with them. If they get into much pain, then I will have no choice but to euthanize them. I don't like to see animals in pain.

 

[debra myers]

I don't know how they get these terrible diseases - but my doberman had diabetes from youth and then breast cancer when age 17, when she went.

 

[chrislbud]

my cat had diabetes. her name was sammy and was about 11 yrs old when we found out. How do people get diabetes? We never fed her sugary things although she was a quite chunky cat. She died a about 2 years ago after a few years of giving her 2 shots a day. I'm not sure if it was the diabetes that caused complications leading to her going to heaven or if it was just cause she was getting older and wasnt in the best phsysical condition. Now we have 2 new kittens. They are about 6 months old. Im worried about our girl phoebe, cus shes been acting sluggish lately and drinking lots and lots of water, exactlly what sammy did when we noticed something was wrong. In sammy it must have been quite advanced because she was urinating blood, thats when we took her to the vet. We must not have noticed the sluggishness as much cus she was usually sluggish and layed back, like any tubby kitty.

So we are taking phoebe to the vet tonite to get some blood tests, it may be cus she was spayed and there is a mood change, but it seems like too much of a drastic mood change to just be that. She is only 6 months, so I have no idea why kittys get diabetes. She hasnt even had time to discover milk from our cereal bowls! So I hope shes alright, ill keep you posted when we find something out.

 

[chrislbud]

also, when sammy was diagnosed and put on the shots, she was just fine. diabetes isnt something you have to euthanize your cat over. Its more of a pain for the owners with the shots and stuff but you get used to it and do it like clockwork everyday. Once she started on her insulin there was no more bloddy urine, no more extremmmely sluggish sammy, she was back to her normal sluggishness. The shots didnt hurt her either, you could do it while she was sleeping and she hardly noticed. My concern is it causing complications over time but if your kitty is in good health, unlike sammys big tummy, i think youll have a good chance of your kitty living a long healthy life, with a little shot twice a day

Im not a vet, but thats what i think

 

[chrislbud]

Cancer. Ok here is another thing. This forum is perfect for me cus the 2 kittys i grew up with went thru both of these problems. Our kitty Oliver aka buddy had cancer. He was a few years younger than sammy and the totall opposite of her. Skinny as a kitty could be, quite a small cat to. I think our new kittens are about as big as he was his whole life now. He ate the same food as sammy but tons of table scraps. Ham, turkey, cake, anything he could get his little paws on. When he was a kitten he busted into out snack bin and took out a hostess chocolate tasty cake from the box. Ripped open the plastic and went to town on it. We woke up to vanilla chocolate cream filled cake all over our house and all over his face. You woulda though he was the one who would get diabetes. A year ago, I was in college and i came home to see him. He was already skinny but i could see his leg bones poking out of his side. i guess i noticed more than my family cus i hadnt seen him for a while. Of course i was worried as heck cus we just lost sammy a year before. We took him to the vet and a large mass was found near his kidneys. It was a tumor. Our hearts sunk. Sammy death came suddenly, was noticeablly sick suddenlly taken to the vet, and thats where she passed. Buddy was different. For about 2 months, we watched buddy go from a happy active skinny kitty who loved ham more than anything, to a skeleton. We said once he started to act not happy we would put him to sleep, and that it what we did. I came home from school as much as I could those months. Everytime I came, buddy would be slightly different. He slowly stopped eating and playing. He still had fun everyonce and a while with a piece of string, or cuddled up on our laps. But the last time I saw him, he would sleep alot. Sit on our porch in the same spot for hours and hours just staring. But he still had some love in him and would be happy to see me. I went back to school and I got the call. Buddy had nothing left. He was acting very depressed and would not move. So my family took him to the vet and held him in a beach towell that i now lay out for out new kittens, and he was euthanized in my mommys arms. he didnt even have the strength to close his eyes my mom said, so she shut them for him.

So we kept him alive for as long as there was happiness. You just know when its time i think.

This is just my story. We didnt catch the cancer untill it was too late to be fixed, we just had to put him on some meds and hope for the best. If you catch it early it could be fixed. But the cancer won in buddy, he fought as hard as he could. Maybe if he was fat like sammy he could have held on a while longer

We have a tiny box in our house with both of our kitties ashes. I pick up our new kitties every now and then and let them sniff it and tell them all the good stories about their brother buddy and their sister sammy.

We now have 2 angels to watch over our 2 babies.