Despite the best efforts of my former vet, I'm alive and feeling great one year after being diagnosed with diabetes. That's all thanks to my mom's quick thinking and tenacity and the fine folks at the Feline Diabetes Message Board.

A quick recap... My ex-vet did some dental work on me without insisting on making sure my blood test results were OK. When I wasn't recovering from that procedure very well, my beans took me back to the ex-vet who found that I had diabetes.

Then he gave me an overdose of insulin and damn near killed me.

Fortunately, Mom found the message board and they steered her to the right place where people actually knew what they were doing. She rescued me from the ex-vet and rushed me to the emergency vets, talking to me the whole way, telling me it wasn't my time yet.

The folks at the emergency vet hospital saved my life after declaring me "essentially a dead kitty."

How dead? How's a temp below 90 and a blood sugar level of 17 grab ya?

Anyway, I'm still here, I get my daily tests and injections of Lantus, a new vet, and a clueless ex-vet who has no idea what rebound is or how to treat feline diabetes properly. He honestly thinks he didn't do anything wrong with me.

To him I paraphrase from one of Dad's favorite films: "From hell's heart, I claw at thee. For hate's sake, I hiss my last breath at thee."

Though that whole "last breath" thing is going to have to wait for a while.