Test Your Diabetic Cat’s Blood Sugar At Home

You can test your diabetic cat’s blood sugar at home using a glucometer — the same over-the-counter device used by human diabetics. Home testing can save your cat’s life! Here is a great video featuring Buddy the Cat.

Its owner shows you how to easily check a cat’s blood sugar level at home using a glucometer, a device that is used to check the level of glucose in blood. It involves obtaining a sample of blood, in this case just a small drop is required.

The blood is then sucked up by the device and after 30 seconds or so it displays a reading. The owner even explains what to do if you have trouble extracting the drop.

This may sound a bit daunting but this excellent video shows exactly how to do it without distressing the cat in any way. However, I suppose this really depends upon the nature of your cat as well. I can imagine that some cats may struggle.

It is really important to regularly test your diabetic cat’s blood sugar at home and to keep a log of the levels and the amount of insulin given. This record can then be shared with your veterinary surgeon to see how treatment is progressing and whether the correct amount of insulin is being administered or not.

This is a really down to earth easy to watch video. Tragically Buddy died in July 2011 after being a diabetic cat for 6 and a half years. He was fourteen years old.

Test Your Diabetic Cat’s Blood Sugar

In normal cats the body naturally produces exactly the right amount of insulin at the right time, a kind of closed loop negative feedback system. With manual administration of insulin we can never reach that same level of accuracy.

So the longer you leave it between testing the greater chance that the wrong dose of insulin may be administered therefore it is important to learn how to test your diabetic cat’s blood sugar at home. It is important to discuss the optimal frequency of testing required for your particular cat with your veterinary surgeon.