Can my cat with IBD and diabetes take buprenorphine and prednisolone?

Yes there is. Talk to your vet about getting her in Budesonide instead for her IBD. This medicaiton has more of a local effect on the GI and doesn’t lead to diabetes as easily. One positive note is that cats diabetes can potentially be reversed by starting them on prescription diabetic food (ie Purina DM, Hill’s M/D). I hope this helps! Best wishes with Chiquita moving forward. Take care.

Whether a long acting steroid or daily oral steroids are better will depend on whether one works better than the other for your kitty's condition. This is something that will have to be tried out. The good thing about short acting budesonide is that it can be stopped anytime if needed. The long acting steroid can not be stopped from working until its activity is over. Depending on the tyoe of long acting steroid this can be up to three months. Trust your vet to do the right thing and prescribe the proper treatment for your cat. If you have problems with pilling your cat there are ways to compound the medication into either a transdermal medicine or flavored chews (tuna, sardine, etc) which can be given like a treat.

Steroids given at appropriate anti-inflammatory dosages do not give permanent and irreversible side effects (no diabetes anyway), so they can be safely given. The appropriate treatment for URI would depend on the underlying cause.

Typically cats get really bad vomiting episodes with IBD and occasional diarrhea. The prednisone likely is treating for inflammation or an immune mediated condition of the gut, which can include lymphoma, IBD, or a condition called lymphocytic plasmocytic colitis. At any rate, if the prednisone is helping, then I would continue with therapy as indicated. A lot of the times you can only get a final diagnosis with gut diseases by having a surgical biopsy taken of the intesines. As you can imagine this is a very invasive procedure, so response to therapy is typically the route we taken when making suspected diagnoses. I would also highly consider getting Beau on a hypoallergenic diet to help make it easy for her gut to digest food. My top picks here are Royal Canin hypoallergeic hydrolyzed protein, Hill's Z/D, OR Royal Canin Selected protein (rabbit/potato). Ask your vet for a prescription if interested! I hope this helps and best wishes with your pet Beau and her chronic loose stools. Take care.

Inflammatory bowel disease is an immune-mediated problem, in which the immune system attacks the cells of the intestines and causes inflammation, thickening, poor absorption of nutrients, etc. Prednisone is a powerful anti-inflammatory drug, and also has immuno-suppressive effects at higher doses. Both of these characteristics are useful in treating IBD.

Prednisone is the drug of choice for irritable bowel syndrome, and it's given for at least two to four weeks. I would try it for Trixie and the vet can do blood tests as needed to check on her calcium levels. I hope this helps.

IBD and GI lymphoma can look identical on lab work and ultrasound - the only way to distinguish the two for certain is to do an intestinal biopsy. Steroids can decrease the number of inflammatory cells and make diagnosis more difficult. Both can be difficult to manage, and each cat may need a different treatment plan. Often pain medications, nausea medications, anti-inflammatories, hypoallergenic diets, probiotics, antibiotics, etc are needed.