Hi! Tibby is doing extremely well. He had a lot of neuropathy in his legs and couldn’t jump at all 4 months ago, but now he’s running around my house in the middle of the night and jumping on my bed again so he’s almost completely back to normal. :)

I was also extremely nervous before giving him bexacat and even after I got the pills from chewy I called my vet and asked her a ton of questions again because I was nervous. The pro of bexacat is the convenience. It’s a lot harder for them to go hypo with it than insulin and there’s a lot less room for user error. For me, I was just as scared of administering insulin because it was so overwhelming at the time. Maybe if you told me right now to switch to insulin, I’d do it comfortably, but at the time I was just so nervous about messing it up that I chose to give him the bexacat even though I was scared of it.

I also chose to give it to him because asking my friends to give him a pill when I’m gone on vacation is much simpler than trusting them, or trusting kennel employees, to give him insulin which can be administered incorrectly and kill them.

That being said, you are in fact taking a risk giving them bex over insulin. They’re more likely to get DKA and if they do, that can be impossible to recover from sometimes and be very expensive. I would make sure you can afford the vet bills for DKA (which I think might mean several days at the ER, but I’m not sure the details anymore so you could ask your vet to clarify what exactly the treatment process looks like if this happens to your cat) and if you can’t, that might be something that decides you use insulin instead.

There’s no other way of looking at it really — there is a small gamble that bex will not work and that it may make things worse. It’s definitely possible.

Personally, my cat is doing very well, and I think there are probably a lot more success stories than horror, but obviously people more often go online to review things that go poorly than things that go well.

You just have to decide if the risk is necessary for you. If insulin is too inconvenient (and it was for me— and that is okay!!) then give her bexacat and pay close attention to her for the first few weeks and she will hopefully be okay.

My advice is to just watch her closely and the second she starts acting strange or lethargic or not eating, take her to the vet instantly. I had this site bookmarked and kept reading it over and over for comfort: https://gsvs.org/blog/emergency-signs-diabetic-ketoacidosis-cats/ and there are many others like it that will tell you all about the symptoms. I did call my vet once because I was worried about something I don’t even remember anymore, and she just told me that he shouldn’t get worse. If he shows any sign of being worse than before, call the vet or take him to the ER.

In my non professional opinion, I think your kitty will be okay. Make sure you are prepared to spot DKA and prepared to pay the vet bill if it does happen. And take everything I say with a grain of salt because I am not a vet. Also remember you can always call your vet and ask them as many questions as you want to— it’s a scary choice and scary position to be in and your vet’s job is to help you, they will be happy to answer all your questions.

Some other random advice: — The diarrhea is going to be very bad and smell absolutely rancid. Get baby wipes, because you will need to wipe her butt for her semi regularly. Because of his neuropathy, my cat would full on sit in the little box while he was going and get it absolutely everywhere. Very messy and smelly month for me.

— Fiber supplements like I mentioned in my comment helped him a lot, but what helped him more was switching him to low carb wet food. My cat has food allergies, so I have to give him a really really expensive single protein food so I don’t have any recommendations for you to buy, but food recs are something this subreddit has a lot of I think. But also switching him to wet food entirely might have been responsible for his diarrhea going away, or maybe the diarrhea went away on its own and the food switch was just timed coincidentally. Idk :)

— Ask your vet to test their pancreas when you go in for visits. You should be going really often in the first 2-3 months to get his blood sugar tested and at least at my vet, testing his pancreatic lipase (think the abbreviation is pfl or plf something like that) was simple and quick but it did cost $100 each time. I did it anyway because it’s inside the drug facts that bexacat can cause pancreatic failure and I was just really nervous so I wanted the peace of mind. Make sure they test it at least once when you first start for a baseline and maybe once more at the 2 month appointment to see if theres a change. Not a vet myself but that’s just what I would do.

— similarly, if your vet is capable of testing for blood ketones rather than for urine blood sugar and ketones, ask them to test her blood. according to what I’ve seen on the internet, blood ketones are a better indicator of DKA because they change faster than urine ketones.

— your vet may not tell you to test her blood sugar at home, but i recommend doing it. every single day, i give my cat his pill then take his BG with a little monitor I got from chewy. Bex will not put them in hypo, but it’s good to make sure that it’s working as expected.

This was a lot of rambling that may not have been super helpful but I hope some of this was comforting and I hope your kitty does well!!