<!DOCTYPE html> Implementation

Implementation

25.4% of families own cats...

That alone is 95.6 million cats living in households across the United States.

target users

GlucoLitter is proposed as a useful tool for anyone who owns a cat. It can be used as a preventative measure by anyone. Not only can it indicate that your cat needs to go to the vet, but it can also be used as an indicator for factors such as dietary problems. With GlucoLitter, we aim to provide all cat owners with the peace of mind that their cat’s health issues are not going unresolved. Cats are often notorious for hiding their symptoms. Specifically with feline diabetes, a cat’s lethargy can often be difficult to notice.

the product

Our envisionment of the implementation of GlucoLitter is in the form of a spray.

Our product will work in three simple steps:

1. Litter Collection

2. Spray

3. Observe

First, cat owners will scoop out a chunk of litter that has been recently urinated on and place it in one of our testing bags. Then, they will spray it with our product. Finally, they will wait for a color change. If it turns a vivid purple, then the cat has excessive amounts of glucose in its urine.

As for the safety of our project, we have gone through multiple iterative design cycles to come up with the most efficient way of creating our product. Initially, we had the idea to create a litter. This would involve implementing our working product into a form of litter that cat owners can buy. With that, we were made aware of some of the safety considerations; cat owners will likely be skeptical about purchasing a litter with biological materials and may consider it to be unsafe. Furthermore, the user friendliness of a litter must be considered. Many litter companies implement features such as odor control, minimal dust, and unscented ingredients, which would be difficult for us to implement. Ultimately, we went back to the drawing board and settled on a litter additive. This would be in the form of smaller pellets that can just be sprinkled into the litter. However, this too had some safety concerns associated with it. Cats could potentially carry the small pellets on their feet or possibly even ingest them. While our product does not have many health risks, cat owners too, may feel unsafe using this option.

Finally, after speaking with multiple vetrinarians and diabetic cat owners, we decided on a spray. Firstly, the spray involves minimal safety concerns; the cat will never be in contact with our product. Secondly, the spray would be more user friendly; owners simply have to spray it on clumps of the litter (in an isolated environment) and observe a color change.

GlucoLitter itself would come in the form of spray bottles: one with our working reagent and one with glucose oxidase. In addition to this, reusable/disposable bags are provided with the kit to create an isolated environment meant solely for testing and the separation of litter from the box.

References

Text References

Published by Emma Bedford, & 27, N. (2019, November 27). Number of cats in the U.S. 2017. Statista. Retrieved October 21, 2021, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/198102/cats-in-the-united-states-since-2000/.

U.S. pet ownership statistics. American Veterinary Medical Association. (n.d.). Retrieved October 21, 2021, from https://www.avma.org/resources-tools/reports-statistics/us-pet-ownership-statistics.