Diabetes in Cats

Monitoring Urine
Glucose & Ketones

Tracking Diabetes in Your Cat’s Urine

Your vet may ask you to check your cat’s urine in order to monitor glucose and ketone levels in the urine. If there is a suspicion that your cat is going into diabetic remission (which means that the insulin requirement is greatly reduced or is not needed) then an early morning urine sample is a very useful monitoring tool.

Collecting Urine

Tools for Collecting

A clean litter tray
Special cat litter that doesn’t absorb the urine (this can be obtained from your veterinary clinic) or cleaned aquatic gravel
Urine dipsticks from your veterinary practice
A place to record results

How to Collect

Prepare the clean cat litter tray and place either the special non-absorbant cat litter or cleaned aquatic gravel within it. Make sure any previous litter has been removed!
Make sure only your diabetic cat has access to this tray and keep them indoors so that they have no option than to urinate within the prepared litter tray.
Examples of non-absorbant cat litters that can help with urine collection include Katkor (little spherical litter beads which don’t absorb the urine) or Kit4Cat (which is a hydrophobic (non-absorbing) sand).
Once your cat has urinated within the litter tray use a pipette to transfer the urine into a sample pot (this is included within the special cat litter kits).

Using Urine Dipsticks

Step 1

Read instructions for dipsticks you are using to ensure test results are completed successfully.

Step 2

Remove one test strip and fully immerse in urine to ensure all pads are soaked.

Step 3

Immediately remove the test strip and tap to remove excess urine.

Step 4

Read the result after the time specified on the dipstick bottle.

Step 5

Hold the stick against the chart on the dipstick container to compare colors.

Step 6

Record the results. Include time of collection and time of Caninsulin^® given on that day.

Tracking Results

Recording your cat’s results is important to properly manage care. Keep track using the Pet Diabetes Tracker app or download a copy of the diabetes diary.