by Benjamin Haines » Sat Oct 08, 2022 9:28 am
About a month ago, I volunteered at a local cat shelter for the first time. Among the residents there was a 17-year-old female named Star, who had recently been diagnosed with diabetes and had just gotten her first insulin injection earlier that day. Star had lived there for most of her life from 2010 to 2018, until she was finally adopted by a family at age 13, but they just returned her to that shelter at the start of September because their other cats were attacking her, causing the fur around her neck and the base of her tail to start falling out. Star was being kept isolated in her own room there at the shelter, away from any other cats. She had some obvious respiratory issues with how loud and congested her breathing sounded, as well as a yeast infection in her ears, and she also seemed like she really had to force herself to move around as though she was experiencing joint pain. She was desperate for human contact and all she wanted to do was lie on my lap when I was there in her room.
My lady and I knew that Star belonged in our home, so we adopted her later that week. Her name at the shelter for all those years had been Star but we learned that the people who adopted her for the past four years had called her Niblet, so we’ve opted to call her Star-Niblet for double the familiarity. After giving her injections of just one unit of insulin every 24 hours for a couple of weeks, we took her to our regular animal hospital last week so they could run a glucose curve panel throughout the day along with a urinalysis, and they found that she is not diabetic. Her blood glucose was on the low side when she was on insulin and there was no glucose in her urine, so she hasn’t needed an insulin injection for a week now. We’re going to run another urinalysis early next week to make sure that her levels are still good without the insulin.
Star-Niblet's diet now consists entirely of low-fat canned food without any high-carb dry food. To help with her congested breathing, the vet prescribed her an oral antibiotic liquid which we gave her twice a day for ten days. We’re also giving her a daily joint health supplement and we’re cleaning her ears with medication every other day. It has all made a tremendous difference. Her breathing quickly improved once she started getting that antibiotic and I’d say the sounds of her nasal congestion are now 90% gone. The fur around her neck and the base of her tail is growing back and she’s already putting more mass on her slender body, as the vertebrae of her back protruded noticeably when we adopted her but that has gotten much better.
This cat loves to play! I didn’t think she would when I first saw her at the shelter but now that she’s feeling better, breathing better, having more energy and muscle mass, she has shown an affinity for playing with strings, scratching posts and catnip. We’re certainly taking care not to over-exert her because she is 17 but she straight-up demands to be played with. She also just randomly runs at top speed through the apartment whenever she feels like it. It’s amazing to see this cat be so spry at her age.
Our biggest concern when we adopted Star-Niblet was how she would get along with our other two cats, Mercury (female, 10) and Casper (male, ~6), since the purported reason why her previous family returned her to that shelter was because their other cats had recently taken to attacking her. We’re keen to avoid anything like that here but so far neither of them have shown any hostility toward her. Star-Niblet demonstrated an immediate dislike of Mercury and Casper, which is understandable. She growls a warning at them whenever they walk near her and she still doesn’t seem to want any contact or interaction with them but they haven’t made any effort to attack her at all. Casper is the most eager to try to make friends with her, frequently rolling around and playing within her eyeline to show her how much fun he can be, but he is also the most terrified of this little old lady cat who is less than half his weight. He’ll sneak up behind her to sniff at her until she swivels around and hisses at him as he runs away hissing. Mercury just seems bewildered by her but she doesn’t mind when Star-Niblet lies down nearby, nor is Mercury afraid to go near her. That’s funny because Mercury has always been very hostile toward other cats aside from our two late male cats with whom she grew up (KC and Hershey) and she was extremely averse to Casper moving in with us last Fall because she had spent months hating him through the window when he was a stray. Star-Niblet has likewise shown more of a tolerance for Mercury’s presence than she has for Casper, probably because she has more in common with Mercury since they’re both small senior females. I’m sure that Star-Niblet will get along with both of them as time goes on.
Photos of Star-Niblet:
https://i.imgur.com/yUO1uBr.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/WKZUEme.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/O9PA2d7.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/fVuRESS.jpg
Star-Niblet and Casper: https://i.imgur.com/X0PKrsm.jpg
Mercury and Star-Niblet: https://i.imgur.com/4iRSTkc.jpg
Star-Niblet and Mercury resting near each other: https://i.imgur.com/tmyUE6N.jpg
Mercury at the window while Star-Niblet sleeps: https://i.imgur.com/zhjOjH2.jpg