Over the last three weeks I have been treating a lovely grey cat called Loui. Loui presented to one of my colleagues as a very poorly cat indeed, he had a nasty case of pancreatitis with concurrent diabetes. My colleagues had already stabilised Loui by the time I came to work at the weekend and he was in the hospital receiving twice daily insulin injections.

His owner was aware that he had been very poorly and that we were having to maintain him on insulin injections but when I first broke the news to her that she would need to inject him at home she was extremely worried. This is not unusual – the vast majority of our clients that have a pet with diabetes have never used a syringe and needle in their lives and are understandably concerned about injecting their pet at home.

Luckily we are very used to teaching people how to give these injections and over the course of the weekend I was able to first demonstrate injecting and then get Loui's mum to give the injections herself. Once we were happy that Loui's blood sugar was stable and his mum was confident with injecting he was able to go home on twice daily injections and his owner has done brilliantly managing his condition. There is something really satisfying about teaching an owner these sort of skills and seeing a cat go home to an environment where they are, undoubtedly, much happier than they would be in hospital. In some cats the diabetes will resolve, but in those where it does not then owners can successfully inject their cats at home for years.