New Member 7th March 2026

[lisanicola87]

Hello everyone,

This is the first time I’ve ever posted in here so I apologise if I get anything wrong. My cat Sutty was diagnosed with diabetes roughly 7 or 8 months ago and she’s still not regulated.

I’ve done lots of research and spoken to the vet about her possibly experiencing the rebound effect so I’m doing a glucose curve today. She was on 3 units of insulin twice a day but we reduced it to 2 units twice a day at the beginning of the week which is why I’m doing the curve today.

She eats a lot and isn’t putting on weight despite the steady increase in insulin over time. She’s been tested for other common illnesses conflicting with the insulin but they came back clear. The vet said there could be other less common issues but given it’s the PDSA and they are a charity, there is a limit to what they can do and I can’t afford a private vet.

I’ve been doing everything possible to manage this. I’ve changed her to grain free wet food in jelly and she’s having 4 pouches of these a day. I’ve recently started to give her some Purina DM dry cat food in the evening with her last wet food pouch as suggested by the vet to try and help her put on some weight and build muscle but I recently read that some people say this is wrong so I’m really confused.

The reason I suspected possible rebound is because she seemed to be getting more hangry and aggressive around food with the higher dose of insulin and not less as she should have been, plus she isn’t putting on weight but isn’t losing anymore either.

I have a Vetmate glucose monitor and what I didn’t realise when I bought it was that it’s really hard to get the test strips and the only place I can purchase from is eBay coming from Korea I think.

I have enough test strips to do a 12 hour curve today but I need more so I can monitor it over a few days.

Does anyone know if there are any other test strips I can use with the Vetmate monitor that I can get in the UK which is where I am based? I’ve looked online numerous times and can’t find any places to get the Vetmate test strips which is really frustrating.

Thanks in advance for your help .

 

[Sienne and Gabby (GA)]

Welcome to FDMB!

Most glucometers are manufactured to use only their strips. You will likely find that using a human meter will not only have less expensive strips but you can find the strips pretty much anywhere. This is some general information for UK members. I'm tagging one of our UK members who can lend a hand with what's available in the UK. @Elizabeth and Bertie

There are a few basics about feline diabetes that may also help. (I'm in the US so forgive me if some of my info is country specific.) The first important issue is insulin. Until relatively recently, vets in the UK were required to prescribe Caninsulin as the first line choice. That has since changed to include Prozinc. Prozinc is a much better option for diabetic cats.

Food is also critical. You want your kitty to be on a low carbohydrate diet. Unfortunately, the DM dry food is not low carb despite it being a supposedly "prescription" food. There are only a very few dry foods that are low carb. We consider low carb as less than 10% carb. Most of our members feed their cat a diet that's in the vicinity of 5% carb. This is our link to low carb food available in the UK. Most of the prescription diabetic food is not terribly low in carbs despite the implication that it is.

As you've noted, home testing is important. A certain amount of "bouncing" is to be expected. Without seeing Sutty's blood glucose test data, it's hard to know if numbers dropped low and then bounced back up. We encourage new members to set up a spreadsheet and signature so we have access to more information. The instructions for both of these items are in this post on helping us to help you.

Please let us know how we can help.