Susie, Diabetic Cat
Index & Contents 

Susie's Water/Dry Matter Ratio

October to December 2005

• This illustrates the difficult period in November when Susie almost stopped eating altogether.
• Throughout October and into November, Susie was tending to eat less and less food.  This was also a time when she was increasingly ill and losing weight.  In mid November things became worse.
• After various blood and health tests at the vets, I put Susie onto a moist food diet and there was an immediate improvement.  There was an instant increase in her food consumption and she also stopped being ill.
• Throughout all of this time, her ratio remained relatively stable, even with the complete change of diet from dry prescription foods to moist high street brands.  Only at the crisis point in mid November did her ratio increase - 2 points are off the scale of the graph and are not shown.
• There was a fall in her eating which began in the 2nd half of December.  This continued until the end of her life in January 2006.

September to December 1999

• This shows the period when I first started measuring Susie's ratio.  Susie started on a very low insulin dosage in late October, after being on Glipizide tablets for a month without any improvement.
• The steady drop seen in late November and into December corresponds to a period when many of her symptoms became less apparent. This happened after Susie's insulin dosage had been increased to 3 units twice a day.  Her diabetes was finally starting to be brought under control.
• During this time, there was only an occasional sign of any improvement in her urine glucose figures, with many samples remaining off-scale.

January to March 2001

• The previous month, Susie had been ill and off her food.  I had suspended her injections altogether and had been increasing them gradually.
• During January, Susie's diabetes was gradually brought back under control by weekly increases in her insulin levels.
• For the remainder of this period her ratio remained very stable, rarely below 2 or above 3.

• Most of this period shows good stability, with Susie's ratio generally between 2 and 2.5.
• In May Susie hurt her leg, requiring several visits to the vets and medication, accompanied by complete loss of appetite for several days. This resulted in a sharp peak in her ratio, but it was short-lived and Susie's ratio quickly returned to normal as soon as she started eating again. This was partly because I didn't stop her insulin altogether, but tried to adjust the dosage according to what she was eating.  It's not an exact science, more a matter of judgment.