How to Pill a Cat

[moriah]

http://www.messybeast.com/moggycat/cat-pill.html

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Or.... my method.

16. Go to vet, buy chicken or salmon flavored "Pill Pockets". Put pill in Pill Pocket, get cat excited by playing with toys, then tease a bit with the pill that smells revoltingly like catfish bait now. Throw pill, watch cat chase and eat it.

Pill Pockets are really a Godsend. But if you have to use them daily, make SURE you seal the package tightly, when they get exposed to air they lose the catfish-bait aroma and don't get eaten as fast.

[MrCoffee]

1. I'm a modified 6

That ruler thing is for sissies.

[kentauros]

2. Those Pill Pockets are great!

My cat's on medication now, too, and I do remember trying them over a year ago and he wouldn't go for them. I was just getting good at stuffing the pills down his throat without getting bitten (accidentally got a finger in the side of his mouth) by covering the pieces with Pill Pocket material. I had three to pill him with, did two, and he went over and ate the last one on his own. I was so happy he did that! :D

Now, I just say "Treats?" and he's all over me to take his medication :rofl:

[moriah]

3. We were so happy we knew about them.....

The first time we used them was with our previous cat, when she got a really bad cold. Kitties don't do well with respiratory ailments -- she wasn't eating because her food didn't smell good, and she was completely miserable.

The vet first had to give her an antibiotic shot because she was so bad off, and once that started to kick in she was starting to get better but still feeling puny. She didn't even want to touch wet food, when before she would try to climb us the moment she heard the can being opened. (We ended up heating tuna fish for her -- when it got warm she could finally smell it enough to get interested.)

But the smell of those Pill Pockets was strong enough to break through, and she wolfed them down. When I opened the package I wanted to puke, they stank so badly. But they did the trick.

With Ninja, we aren't having to give him a daily med but when he had the awful bladder problems he was on antibiotics for nearly two months. (Apparently boy kitties don't void completely even when they aren't stopped up, they supposedly don't get bladder infections as often as girls but they are much harder to clear up when they do get them.)

After nearly two months of taking them he wasn't all that interested in the Pill Pockets, so that's when we started making it a game. At first he'd wolf them down, but maybe he got bored. Alternating the chicken and salmon helped a bit. But then we just started getting his predator instinct going first, and when we throw the pocket he runs after it and wolfs it down before he realizes what he did.

BTW: That site is truly awesome, the lady who wrote it is a very dedicated volunteer with Cats Protection in the UK. She has lots of very good information as well as funny stuff.

[Cleita]

4. My beast can't even be pilled by the vet.

They have creams though that can be rubbed in their ears. For some reason he doesn't object to that. I think maybe it's hard for him to swallow pills, maybe a small esophagus or something like it which makes him object so strenuously.

[moriah]

5. Wow... will he take liquid meds?

The first cat I ever had was like that, didn't want to take any pill whatsoever.

Unfortunately she had allergies. My sister came to visit, and apparently brought some of the dog dander in with her. Cerri(dwen) loved my sister and slept on her, but was likely allergic to the dog, or perhaps just the air -- it was spring. My sister said Cerri laid on her chest the entire night, but neither of them got much sleep because Cerri sneezed continuously.

I took her to the vet and he said he thought it was allergies but wanted to give her a round of antibiotics just in case. We'd tried to pill her once before and she got really violent about it, so he got the liquid Amoxicillin that you give to kids -- and it likely had the same bubblegum taste. (Why don't they make cat meds taste like tuna?) He held her and used the dropper to put it in her mouth for the first dose. She started foaming at the mouth.

Oh, and did I mention she was a black cat?

Hot pink foam all over her, all over me, all over the vet, and all over the vet's office.... it was a startling contrast to her coat. We ended up grinding up the antibiotics and allergy meds and putting them into wet food.

Oh, if your vet ever charges you a ton for allergy meds for a kitty, we found out that they were the exact same thing as 4-hour Chlor-trimeton for humans, just given twice a day instead of six times a day, when we took her to a new vet. Went from $30+ a month for pills to $4 for a three month supply.

[Cleita]

6. It's hard but I can get the liquid Amoxicillin in him.

The gel in his ears is to deliver thyroid medication to him, which he has to have every day.