Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Diabetes detective?

We have a cat that is in the habit of pawing at Tori's door in the middle of the night, which generally wakes me up. Usually I yell at him, and he stops, but occasionally I actually have to stand up out of bed and move towards him in a threatening fashion (ooh, here comes scary ol' dad, I better run ;) to get him to stop.

2:00 am last night I am awakened to the sound of Punky pawing at the door. Yell... nothing, still pawing. Ok, I have to use the bathroom anyway, so I get up, and then, since I'm awake now I decided I better eat some of those Fiesta Cheddar Cheese Cheezits (get your own box), to keep them from going to waste.

As I'm out on the couch happily munching, I hear Tori's door open. Looking down the hall I see her shuffling to the bathroom, figuring Punky woke her up, too. She went to the bathroom, came out to say hi, and shuffled back off to bed. Moments later, she reappeared, and told me she was feeling low, and mentioning that her legs are trembly. Wasting no time getting the meter, we have a reading of 76, not technically that low, but still below our target range, and quite possibly still on the way down. One juice box, 15 minutes, and a retest later reading 104, she heads off to her room, leaving me sitting on the couch pondering whether Punky was detecting her going low, or whether he just wanted in her room. I know of the dogs in service to diabetics, never heard of a cat, but am just so curious now. He doesn't paw at the door every night, just every seemingly random occasion. He's never actually been in her room overnight, and never paws on Toby's door.

I'm tempted to test her the next time he paws at the door to see if she is anywhere near low...

4 comments:

Jamie said...

Hi there. I just recently came across your blog from the DOC.

Interesting about your cat. I have heard about this before though and I know Kerri (from Six Until Me blog) has a cat that will wake her up when she is low too.

Amazing little creatures :) It'll be interesting to hear the results the next time kitty paws at her door.

Kerri. said...

Hello! I do have a Magic Cat who never misses a low. She pads about my head and meows vehemently whenever I'm below range and slightly sweaty.

This cat has saved me a number of times. She gets whatever flavor of Tender Vittles she wants. :)

Anonymous said...

Hi, I have a daughter Tori too!!! She is 9 year old. I find in interesting about the cat. We also have 2 cats, and Cuddles always seems to know when Tori is low. She sleeps with her, and I think she wakes her up at night when she is low. I know some might think we are crazy but I believe this to be true. Just found this site. I hope to come back to it soon

Shannon said...

I was just going to say that Kerri's cat detects lows and someone else's cat does that too. Is it Tek's or Nicole's? Not sure.

There should be a study done about that.

I want to buy a cat just to see if it will work for us.