What’s best to do - diabetes - nervous cat

[Hopefullycatok]

We have a 15 year old rescue cat that’s been part of our family for 8 years.
She has recently been diagnosed with diabetes and we are fully prepared to treat as needed.
BUT she is a very very nervous cat. She spends her day hiding and will occasionally come out for a little fuss and food - we’ve just assume she has had a very rough start in life hence being rescue. For the last 8 years she hasn’t really changed - maybe less scared! But she very scared of being handled by men so it will need to be me that does injections and I’m not sure how she is going to react and whether she will even let me pick her up :(
At the moment we’ve managed to keep her in a bit more but she is refusing to use the litter box for wees - so most mornings she has peed on the floor :( but we need to keep her in to give her the injections.

I don’t know what’s best to do :( will it be more trauma for her or will she be ok? I can’t even think of letting her go (though bleaching the floor again this morning as she has peed behind the unit and it’s gone into the skirting board causing the wood to swell it did cross my mind for a moment)

What’s fair for her :(

I had an elderly semi-feral who was diagnosed with diabetes. The needles you use are very fine and I found my cat hardly noticed them going in. I took my cat home from the rescue I volunteer at and there was another cat there who had diabetes-you just had to put his food in front of him and he took no notice of the injection. Perhaps you could give her tuna or some other nice treat and see if that works? I find that with nervous cats if you don't try to pick them up or restrain them things often go more smoothly, so just try to inject her by kneeling beside her and sticking the needle in as she's eating. If you do mange to successfully inject her you'll probably find the weeing improves as drinking more & weeing more is a symptom of the high blood sugar.