Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Cat Got Your Insulin Pump?

After the loss of our beloved 21-year-old cat Pumpkin at the start of this year, we were pretty heartbroken, and sure that we wouldn't love again for a good long time. Sometimes life has other plans, however; a pregnant feral cat was taken in by a co-worker, and soon some kittens needed homes. That's how Willow and Giles came into our lives (there might be a naming theme evident there) and they are absolutely adorable.

Meet Willow:


Meet Giles:

They are the best of friends, either snuggling with each other or play-fighting like crazy:


Okay, but why am I telling you this on a diabetes-related blog? Because sometimes kittens and diabetes don't mix. My original alternate title for this entire blog was "Cat Got Your Insulin Pump?" Cats, because they are weird, love the smell of insulin, and cats, especially kittens, love to play with anything that dangles. So, one day after dealing with frantically wrestling beasties, I started to feel unwell. My blood sugar reading seemed unreasonably high. I couldn't figure out the culprit, until I carefully examined my pump tubing.

It was covered in tiny, kitten-sized bite marks.


Cat got my insulin pump, indeed.

As a bonus image, here's me being interviewed about Toronto and multiculturalism on TV! It was a lot of fun. I'm excited about Princeton Reunions this weekend, so I'm wearing my school sweatshirt.

-Ilana

8 comments:

  1. Enjoy your kittens. Kitties vs pump was something I hadn't thought of. Yikes!

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    1. I'm definitely enjoying them, though I have to be more careful about letting the tubing dangle!

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  2. Awww, they sure are cute though!!! My cat likes to swat at my tubing, but luckily she hasn't ever chewed it (yet??).

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    1. They're so cute I couldn't care too much about it, but I'm going to tuck the tubing away more carefully from now on. Pumpkin never chewed the tubing, but she did like to paw at it.

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  3. They are adorable! Our kitty has chewed on my actual pump in the middle of the night when it's beeping (she left teeth marks), but never actually chewed through tubing. I'll have to keep an eye out for that one, though!

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    1. Yeah, it was very strange...like I suddenly had serrated tubing!

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  4. OOh! Your kittens are SO FLIPPING CUTE!!! Sorry they chewed your pump tubing...

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    1. They are so cute that I actually need a swear-jar-type device to break me of the habit of looking at them and cooing, "You are soooo cute!" If I put 25 cents in there each time I did that, I could save for retirement!

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