IT’S TIIIIIME!! We are pleased to announce the DCIN 2026 Extra-Sweet Kitties Calendar Contest! Now through 10/29/25 at 9pm Eastern you can enter your extra-sweet kitty (GAs included!) and place your votes – $5 per entry, $1 per vote. You can also reserve a calendar date square for $10 each!
Please review the rules and enter your kitty here: https://www.gogophotocontest.com/diabeticcatsinneed2026
Best of luck to all the kitties!!!
~Amy
THANK YOU to everyone who made our year-end fundraisers a success! And THANK YOU to DCIN’s amazing volunteers, who are the invisible people doing all the work to help extra-sweet kitties!
Because of your amazing dedication, in 2024 DCIN has helped almost 200 kitties directly, including 22 shelter cats. This isn’t counting all the rehoming courtesy posts we make and all the people and cats we help who don’t make it into our official database. The work we do here is truly lifesaving and life-changing, and it’s imperative that DCIN be able to continue this critical work.
Would you join us during this last week of 2024 to help ensure DCIN has a solid financial start to 2025? We would love to be able to reopen our Compassionate Assistance Program, which provides ongoing help. Most of the kitties we helped in 2024 were under our One-Time Assistance Program, and they typically need ongoing help as well. We simply don’t have the financial reserves now to support CAP properly. We’re depending on our supporters to help build a fund that we can use to relaunch CAP in 2025! CLICK HERE to support our work!
We also are in desperate need of more Case Managers who can take on clients and help them navigate the world of the extra-sweet dance. Please get in touch if you think you’d be interested! Please know going in that being a CM can be intense and time-consuming. Many people start the volunteer process and then slowly fade away. If you think you have what it takes to join the Small & Mighty DCIN Team, we’d love to chat!
Thank you all again. Happy Holidays and Happy New Year 2025!
~Amy, Executive Director of Diabetic Cats in Need
DCIN Friends: We are honoring our Founder Venita Wood, who recently crossed the Rainbow Bridge to join the innumerable kitties she loved, on this Mother’s Day by launching a fundraiser in her memory. Venita was the extra mom so many extra-sweet kitties needed. She didn’t just run DCIN, she loved each kitty she helped as if he or she were her own. And – when she found she could no longer manage DCIN on her own – she was willing to do something few founders are: She let a new team step up and continue her life-saving work.
We remain grateful for everything Venita did and hope that our Friends will help her legacy continue by giving to our Compassionate Assistance Program (CAP), the flagship program Venita built DCIN around. Through it, we provide caregivers of extra-sweet kitties who are experiencing limited-income situations with the diabetic testing supplies they need, as well as access to the medicine they need with a current prescription. We provide up to $500 in diabetic-related vet care per year. As you might imagine, this is an expensive program to run! It costs us about $1,000 per year to support one CAP client. Every dollar counts!
If you’d like to join us in honoring Venita’s memory and legacy, please click the PayPal Donate button at the bottom of this post.
We’ve brought out DCIN’s initial logo for this one event – Do you remember it?? 
Thank you so very much for caring and for helping Venita see how much she is still appreciated as she watches over us all from the Bridge. ~Amy
DCIN Friends: It is with the heaviest of hearts that we announce our Founder, the inimitable Venita Wood, has crossed the Rainbow Bridge to join all the kitties who were waiting for her. 😿 We mourn the loss of an amazing person whose love for kitties – hers and others’ – knew no bounds.
Thousands of diabetic kitties owe their lives and renewed health to Venita, without whom DCIN would not exist. She ran this organization almost single-handedly from its founding in 2009 until the end of 2014, when we needed five new volunteers just to take over the core duties she had been performing. (We’ve added even more volunteers since then and are always willing to welcome more!)
When Venita founded DCIN in 2009, she had joined an online message board for diabetic cat caregivers after one of her precious furbabies received that terrifying Feline Diabetes diagnosis. She quickly realized that there was a need for an organization that could provide financial assistance to low-income caregivers: She saw on a daily basis people making the heart-wrenching decision to surrender their precious companions to shelters (and hoping they would make it out alive) or simply putting the kitty to sleep – all because treating Feline Diabetes is extremely expensive and people were having to choose between keeping their cat and paying rent or utilities. No one should have to make that decision! Venita founded DCIN upon that principle. To this day, DCIN holds as its mission the twin goals of providing financial support for those in need and education for our clients and the broader FD community.
Though we do not want to turn this tragedy into a fundraiser, we did want to share with you requests from the dear friend who let us know of Venita’s passing. Venita was charitable through and through, so we think she would be okay with this request to support two of her favorite organizations: “One of the charities she recently supported helped homeless people with pets: https://petsofthehomeless.org/ . Or just help a cat through DCIN at https://dcin.dreamhosters.com/donate/ or another charity. Or tip your hat and give extra love to your kitties today.”
Everyone in the US and Canadian Feline Diabetes worlds owes Venita a major debt of gratitude. I haven’t mentioned the numerous other ways in which she helped us all (like performing the first test of Levemir in kitties, leading to a whole new class of insulin for us to use), but each and every one of us experiences the ripple effect of Venita’s amazing work every single day.
Please join us in sending up a massive THANK YOU to Venita Wood, who made such a difference to so many kitties and their people. Because Venita was such a private person, we have chosen to include only her FB profile picture – a cat joyously riding a bicycle – instead of a photo of her. We think this image embodies her spirit.
As Venita would say, “Thank you for caring.” ~Amy
