Cats

The Free Dental Checkup For My Cat Which Cost $1200

Me, I am fine with budgeting on the pension but they eat $10 worth of Fancy Feast a day.

Lesley Dewar There's always another story to tell

4 min readMar 30, 2023

Image of a tabby cat with white chest and feet, sitting on a cat tower covered with grey fabric.

The Free Dental Checkup Which Cost $1200.

This week, (March 2023) I popped in to Feline Diabetes (our support group on Facebook) give an update on Splinter, who continues to thrive. Two weeks ago, he had a dental check up, scheduled for three months after his last vet visit for a blood test for his glucose etc
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He definitely had a couple of bad teeth, which were already starting to interfere with his ability to chew up his chopped chicken livers. Since they were removed on the day of the checkup, ($1200 and thanks Centrelink for the loan, repayable at $100 fortnight) he is doing extremely well.
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Image of a tabby cat with a white front, showing off its teeth — Photo by Shahmie Mahmoud on Unsplash

We are lucky that I detected the possibility of diabetes when he started losing weight and weeing way too much, way back in October 2022, because of the amount of water he drank. This is how we started here.

I was quickly onto it with research, and he had to go cold turkey and stop eating dried cat food. He loved his kibbles, but that’s all done now.

Just that single action was enough to start mitigating the progress of diabetes.

His earlier glucose test reading were all pre-insulin and I started managing his diet quite aggressively regarding carbs.
Oct 18 27.5
Oct 25 23.0 (carbs gone )
Oct 26 20.0 (no food, vomiting)
His insulin started Oct 26 — because diet alone was not going to do the job.

UPDATE not even a month later, on November 2, 2023:

What a result! Splinter’s curve test results at the Vets are:

9:00am 12.5
11:30am 10.9
1:30pm 13.2
3:30pm 15.6
His urine is 100% clear

The Vet is very happy with how I am managing Splinter — especially as his weight is stable. In fact, he is up to 5.3kg now, as high as he has ever been. His urine output has dropped to a good level. It’s easy for me to tell in the litter box whose wee is whose.

I am also deeply grateful that an anonymous donor paid my vet bill for me that day!

No Blood Testing For Glucose Here — It’s March 2023.

He is well into his 18th year, and we are testing his wee regularly. No ketones, no glucose. He has 1u of insulin at 5am and 5pm every single day. We thought about doing the blood testing three or four or more times a day, to check his glucose levels, but he just hated me messing about with his ears.

I bought all the gear, installed the app on the phone. Never got started. I tried the sock full of warmed rice, but he just wasn’t having any of that.

Image of cooked prawns with their tails hanging over the side of a bowl — Photo by blackieshoot on Unsplash

He got a clean bill of health at the Vets after his anaesthetic. He was a bit sad, so I spoiled him with three prawns. 😁😁 Just the word PRAWNS was enough to bring him running.
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Hello ChatGPT — What’s Up With Splinter?

He did start having a strong smelling urine, with ammonia, post op. Phew!! Ran an enquiry about the raw meat and his wee on ChatGPT. Yep!
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Too much protein in his diet was causing the ammonia smell. He was eating his lamb kidney and chicken livers in preference to his proper food.

Plus without his teeth, he couldn’t chew up the kidneys pieces properly, even though I cut them up for him. The chicken livers had been pureed but it was very hard to judge the size of a serve and he wasn’t getting the "eating" satisfaction by not having to chew them.
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We cut out the livers and lamb kidneys for a few days and he was getting small serves of raw barramundi instead. Much smaller serves. Which was definitely the preference of ChatGPT, on the protein level, between the three choices.
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In just a few days, his urine output had dropped by at least half, it had no smell at all, and he was back to being his playful self.
But why does it have to be at 2am!
😅😅😅
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Image of five cans of Fancy Feast cat food in different flavours

Of course, now his protein intake has been much reduced, he is eating more Fancy Feast but that’s hopefully not a problem. Maybe the lower toileting output will reduce the amount of expensive kitty litter we have to buy (it’s $30 for 15kg) and that will help balance the budget.

He and Sophie continue to be great mates, eat and sleep together, and wrestling matches are the norm.
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We are all doing very well. Well those two are and I am recovering from my own dietary mistake. 😉😉 Even ten years post chemo and cancer, I have to remember I can’t digest fat, and half a block of dark chocolate is definitely a No! No! for me.

So, please keep reading. Splinter deserves it! And so does Sophie, his bonded mate.

Image of Splinter on the back of the lounge chair looking out of the window and Sophie is on the seat looking at me. In the background is a cabinet full of collectable cat statues.