This is the only thing I can think of what happened, other than a fur shot. I did a test with the control solution yesterday morning. Last night I notice a tiny bit of the red fluid dried in the channel where the test strip goes so I cleaned it off with a damp q-tip. I wonder if a little moisture got farther into the meter and caused everything to go wonky. Once I realized this I tested with the Relion also.
At 11:30, the Alpha came up as 420 and the Relion at 308. That's a really wide spread for those meters. I used them both on the next two tests, including this morning, and the ran much more normally compared to each other:
12:30 PM - 364/325
5:00 AM - 365/321
So I'm wondering if maybe she wasn't really as high as I thought she was last night, that it was the control solution throwing things off. I mean, she was still probably in the 300s, but not as high as 420+.
After that 420/308 comparison I did a test with the control solution and it came in at 157. The acceptable test range is 108-160. Any other time I've used the solution it tested in low 100, always under 112.
We'll see how she does today. She's really active right now, which is great. I tried to go back to sleep but she decided it was play time so we had a quick game of laser pointer, with her galloping like a little herd of buffalo back and forth across the living room.