Hi!
Most cataracts are thankfully not connected to diabetes; you'd normally see increased drinking and weight loss if the diabetes is strong enough to damage the eyes and cause cataracts. Like Adelle said, blood sugars are a much better indicator of diabetes since guinea pig urine is naturally quite high in glucose, which has fooled a number of vets before.
I am tagging in
@pig in the city and
@Claire W , who have both experience with looking after a diabetic/intermittedly diabetic guinea pig and can help you with the diet side and practical tips. Mild diabetes can usually be bright under control pretty easily by staying off certain foods and any meds that contain sugar or honey (like metacam).
If you cannot get pellets low in carb, feed less normal ones. pellets should only make a very small part of the normal food intake, most should be hay.
There are two much more common varieties of cataracts:
- congenital cataracts: these guinea pigs are born with the genetic disposition to develop them at a young age, usually at 1-2 years old, but at the extreme, they can be already born with them.
- old age cataracts: These are pretty common in older guinea pigs (and humans!)
The good news is that eye sight is not the most important sense to a guinea pig and that after a period of transition, they learn to compensate with their other senses. Usually, you won't even know that a guinea pig is only partially sighted/blind.
It is generally easier if the cataracts come on slowly, but sometimes, cataracts or especielly nuclear sclerosis (where the whole lens goes opaque instead of the punctual cloudiness of a cataract) can come on very quickly.
My Mererid has just experienced this in late spring, and her sister Morwenna is also developing congenital cataracts; they are both 2 years old and from a background of long term negelct and uncontrolled inbreeding.
Make sure that you give more audible clues, but aside from securing very steep ramps (shallow ones are no problem as long as they have a surface that retains scent well, like some old carpet cut-offs), there are no special measures you need to take. You can even switch around the layout, as long as you do not wash them. Blind piggies orient themselves mostly by smell and follow scent spoors; you can also find them often sniffing the air; their hearing is also going to get a lot sharper. I have had (and adopted) a number of cataract guinea pigs, and they have lived the same fully enriched life as normal piggies, including roaming time and lawn time.
My Mischief even free roamed the garden under my supervision and learned to return to a moved run over the distance of several yards just by following my vocal cues as long as I stood next to the opening and guided her with a flow of words telling her whether she was going right or not.
You may find these links here comforting:
Mischief's story:
Turning a blind eye on mischief - another piggy story
Mali's story of her life with the cataract group. This also contains a video of her following her own scent spoor during zoomies - she enjoyed doing that until she died at ca. 8 years old and despite being somewhat arthritic, as you can see.
Popcorn Happily Again With Your Friends, Mali!
If you want to see videos of totally blind and deaf born guinea pigs popcorning and having fun on lawn, have a look through the videos from The Excellent Adventure Sanctuary and their lethal guinea pigs:
The Excellent Adventure Sanctuary (for guinea pigs with extra needs) | Facebook
