Individualizing Care for the Cat with Diabetes – Do I Use Nutrition, Insulin, or SGLT2i?
What makes some with diabetes so challenging to manage? Which insulin and diet should we start with? What about oral therapies? What data is there to support these decisions? Is remission always the goal? Performing and interpreting glucose curves (manually or using a Flash device) provides useful information to determine best type of insulin as well as dose adjustments in a patient. However, performing curves isn’t appropriate for every client. When should we reach for an SGLT2i? How do we manage cats on an SGLT2i? The goals of therapy differ with different patients and different clients.

Obesity: winning the battle of the bulge takes more than a bag of food
For weight loss to be beneficial, even 10% loss can help with energy, mobility and reduce the chance for the development of diabetes in cats. This lecture discusses aspects of weight loss and management that go beyond the diet fed and examines some thoughts about neuroendocrine implications of obesity. The keys to successful program are providing education, support, and follow-up, not just a weight loss diet.

Dr. Detective: solving the challenge of feeding the multicat home with different nutritional needs
How does one logically approach feeding the multicat household in which different cats have differing nutritional requirements? We’ll review what is special about cats from a nutritional perspective and briefly review the rationale and evidence behind therapeutic diets. This session will give practitioners the tools to set about solving this challenge in a straight-forward fashion by determining which of the cats is most fragile nutritionally and how to use characteristics of different cats to facilitate tailored feeding.

Comorbidities: Managing the unmanageable. How I approach a cat with CKD, diabetes, arthritis, hyperthyroidism, and hypertension.
The older cat is predisposed to many medical problems and often presents with several concurrent disease conditions. We will look at managing a cat with chronic kidney disease, diabetes, hyperthyroidism, hypertension, dental disease, and arthritis.

Diseases of the Nasal Planum
The most notorious disease of the nasal planum in cats is squamous cell carcinoma, however there are numerous other non-neoplastic conditions to consider when presented with a cat with an ulcerated, erythematous, and crusty, swollen or even proliferative/nodular nose in this species. Nevertheless, a wide variety of diseases may present with similar clinical signs. This presentation will look at differentials, diagnostics, and possible therapies.

But My Indoor Cat Doesn’t Get Fleas or Ticks!” And Other Feline Myths
There are many beliefs about cats that are untrue. Many are about how best to care for cats (recognizing sickness, preventive health care needs of indoor housed cats, optimal age for spaying or castration, what to feed cats). Others are about the people they live with (how to feed cats, teaching cats, what purring means, pregnancy, and toxoplasmosis, changing client behavior).