Liability disclaimer: We are not medical / veterinary professionals. This is what we do. We take no responsibility for what you do with this information. Please contact a veterinarian for advice for your pet(s).
For those not willing to do the manual glucose testing from the ear, his is what we do. We bought an animal safe hair clipper and shave a spot down to skin between his ribs and rear legs. We don’t want to hit bone. We also bought a ‘genteel‘ suction lancet device to help get the blood to the surface. Sometimes it is hard to get suction, so we try to get our cat to lie down to make a better seal. It can take 1 – 6 tries to get a good enough drop to measure. Usually 1 – 2 tries after practice. He barely notices anything is happening. This is cat dependent, I am sure this will vary. We could not do the ear blood draws successfully with our cat. Our cat, Friendly is very good with this procedure. Your can may not be as compliant.
Our cat/feline was recently diagnosed with diabetes after a 5 lbs weight loss in a few months. 20 lbs down to 15 lbs.
We have been trying to find data to gauge what may be ‘normal’ in treating a diabetic cat.
I have found it very difficult to find blood glucose curves to compare my cat’s readings to.
So, in the hope that others may find this useful, here are our cats curves.
We have been fortunate that we have been able to afford the Freestyle Libre 2 monitor. It allows for real time monitoring, thus the detailed graphs. They are designed for humans, so using them on your cat comes with it’s own challenges. So if you can afford it and decide to try it, read, read , read. Only certain model phones can use the app. WARNING: using a continual monitor can make you obsessive about the numbers from minute to minute. It may not be for you. Most people use the standard lancet meters successfully a few times a day. At the very least just before you give an injection to see if you should skip it or not.
There is a lot of data in this pdf. I find the graphs starting at page 16 the most useful.
Note that our numbers are not the same as the USA. The rest of the world uses mmol/L. Use a conversion chart to compare.
We are not medical professionals so what I say here may or may not be accurate.
We were directed to give 2 units of prozinc (a long-acting insulin) twice a day using a U40 syringe. (Note, it is IMPORTANT to use the correct model of syringe for the insulin you are using or your dosing will be wrong!) The problem was that the peaks and nadir (low point) only occurred once a day. You are to give the insulin the same times every day at the high point in the curve. So we were confused. After many many hours of research in Feline Diabetes forums we determined the dose was way to high. We dropped to 0.5 units twice a day and the peaks and nadir occurred twice a day as it should.
We notice that the difference between his highs and lows were sometimes higher than 10. Is that normal? We don’t know. But the difference ‘seems’ to reduce as his average blood sugar reduces. We also noticed his day and night injection produced different results. Why? No idea. We are hoping that as we get him lower that it may have a difference of 5? If it doesn’t we will be content to just have him reduced overall.
Update:
So we found that the freestyle libre (alternative to libre freestyle) was just not working as well as we hoped for our cat. His skin does not respond well to adhesive. His skin slowly blisters and it becomes messy and painful. There was a lot of bloody scars when we removed it. Also his hair grows quickly which tends to push and loosen the sensor up and out affecting readings. Cats and constant stretching and active movement also tend to loosen it. We may go back to it if we need to monitor him continuously. We have stopped using the freestyle for months now and instead check his blood 3 times daily. Each time just before shots and once in the middle of the day at his nadir (mid point). The night time nadir measurement is missed but we leave plenty of wet low carb food out for him to self regulate if necessary. What I have noticed is that I have stopped obsessing about his readings. That is tremendously liberating. Also the human reader and strips (Accucheck Guide) we are using read higher than the freestyle did.
So we have slowly gone up to 1.25 units of prozinc and his numbers have slowly decreased. He may end up at 1.5 units. We shall see.
This is our ‘sugar sheet’, commonly used in fb feline diabetes groups. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IHC8cdnfFJXAt0l40WoJIGJvLKnpcjeDMW5WtNTg6kg/edit?fbclid=IwY2xjawLmcAxleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETF3QkxsY25QQXE5ZzBYZFJvAR4i96_I8nwGaF5uKiOJEyuTq39EXOTmF5i-uNGQ05eE8KalqahkZErK3At9hg_aem_UEzPqWlIf6y1rrRRolgJrw&gid=1082822524#gid=1082822524
The following was posted to the FB feline diabetes group:
Thank you for the support of this group. Managing feline diabetes is an incredible challenge but the support here has made it a little bit easier.
This will be a long read. We would like to share what worked for us. The short version, we were able to manage Friendly’s diabetes well for 2 years. But his worsening kidney disease caused him to stop eating.
“Friendly” was diagnosed with diabetes in Jan 2024 at the age of 15. For two years we took his blood faithfully 3 times a day, gave him his two shots and adjusted as necessary.
He had ups and downs. There were two short periods when he could barely walk, then he would recover. His eyesight (cataracts) got worse and worse. But he took it like a champ. He had many more good days than bad.
Many months ago, on his latest vet visit, he was also diagnosed with Kidney Disease. It was our decision to treat just the diabetes as his age was advanced. Introducing a low protein diet for kidney disease would only make his diabetes harder to treat. A month ago the two diseases expressed themselves together. His blood sugar stayed unusually low and flat. We had to reduce his insulin. No, he was not in remission. His appetite reduced. On his last week he stopped eating all together. Occasionally we could get him to lick wet food juice, tuna juice, etc… Some milk. But everything we tried, he quickly would no longer eat it. He got to the point where water was all he would ingest. Due to our initial hope that he might recover, the holidays, and weather, it took us 5 days to get an appointment for an in-home euthinasia (our first). It is not a perfect solution for everyone. The big down side is the cost. If we cancelled on the day of the appointment they kept %50 of the cost. If the Vet left for the appointment and you cancelled they kept the full cost. It is far cheaper to drive your pet in.
We could not have asked for a better patient. Cats are not known for being cooperative patients. “Friendly” always bravely let us take the readings and give him the shots.
He would not let us draw blood from his ear. We tried the freestyle libre. They are expensive. They are hard to keep stuck on. Friendly’s skin would blister with the glue, and they are very hard to get off cleanly. Also I ‘obsessed’ with the continuous stream of numbers. It is good for a newbie, but for me it just led to excessive and unnecessary worry. We also found the freestyle would often give anonymous readings or no readings at all. This was likely due to it coming loose with the cat’s range of motion. Freestyles might be better if you can get your cat to wear a loose to snug fitting shirt to keep it steady?
So instead, what we did was shave a 1 x 3 inch strip behind his ribs and before his rear hip using cat safe clippers so as to not cut his skin. Don’t use razors. Then we took blood using a genteel suction lancet device. Sometimes we could get a good draw on the first attempt, but often it might take 2 – 5 (or more attempts). See: https://www.emogic.com/notes/cat-diabetic-glucose-blood-curve/
We used human blood glucose meters. We found the readings were close enough to the feline devices. We used the accucheck guide we could get at the pharmacy, and the Bravo meter (bought online).
We took a reading at 7:45 am, gave a shot, then at the midpoint nadir 1:45 pm then measured at 7:45 pm for his second shot. We did not check the night nadir.
Any time we adjusted a dose we went up or down slowly (.25 units) then waited 5 days to wait for his readings to stabilize. If required, we adjusted again. When we made changes faster it seemed to make things worse.
RIP Friendly – 2 Jan 2026