Julie, so sorry to hear that Hobbes is diabetic.  As you will have
gathered by now, it's not a death sentence and is really quite easy to
manage once you get into a routine.  Hobbes will enjoy the special
attention, particuarly as you'll have to initially feed him on his own
so that he gets the food he needs.

We didn't have to give Ted a special diet, but we did have to be
careful about quantities and we had to feed her more often to begin
with until her insulin / sugar ratio settled down.  We did,however,
start giving her better quality dry food (she refused to eat the good
quality wet food, so we stuck with supermarket crap that she loved so
much).

The biggest thing we had to learn, after learning how to give insulin
injections, was how to recognise and how to prevent hypoglycaemic
attacks, which happen when the blood sugar drops too low.  It is
*absolutely* terrifying seeing your beloved cat stumbling around,
making hollow distressed yowling noises, and acting blind and deaf.
We were convinced that she had had a stroke the first time it happened
and absolutely paniced (actually, I burst into hysterical tears, but
nevermindthat).  A dose of sugar-water (or karo syrup) given by mouth
fixed her up in about 5 minutes - it was that quick.  After that we
kept 10ml syringes (without needles) filled with 10mls of sugar-water
in the fridge.  We stopped the needle end with blu-tack.  The syringes
are good because you can give the dose very quickly.  We got the
syringes from the vet (they gave them to us for free, but then we had
spent thousands on Ted by that stage).

FWIW, Ted usually only had hypos when she was really stressed or when
she had vomited within an hour or so of eating dinner.

*sigh* we still miss Ted, but we don't miss being  tied to the dragon
of her insulin timetable. While we were home every evening it was
fine, but going out for dinner or going away for a few days posed
problems.  We had a great cat-sitter in Armidale whose day job was as
a vet nurse, but of course we lost her when we moved to Sydney.  For a
while we had a vet nurse here who was willing to come out and look
after her twice a day, but then she moved outta town.  After that we
got Dave's parents to visit (from 800km away) when we went away for
longer than a couple of days, but obviously we tried to minimize that.
For short periods we boarded her at the vet, but she got so stressed
there she got repeated hypoglycaemia attacks and came home sicker than
when she left.  Most of the time we avoided both being away at the
same time; but that also takes its toll - on our marriage.

Oddly enough, after Ted was gone, one of the hardest things I've had
to do was to take her left-over syringes and insulin to the vet to be
re-homed.  It felt like I was handing over part of Ted and I'm afraid
I cried a little bit more.

Hugs,
Tish