Poor Valeria

[jyasu]

This evening I administered 2 of the medications prescribed to Valeria.
This is the first time I've ever given medicine to a cat; Valeria was not
thrilled to serve as my practice patient.

It took me a full 30 minutes to administer the pill she needs to take for

Comments

[sethrenn]

Have you guys tried Pill Pockets? Some cats won't go for them, but we've had very good luck with both of our cats-- even getting them to swallow deworming pills, which are quite large, when they were inside Pill Pockets. They just basically seemed to think they were kitty treats, and were none the wiser about what they were really getting.

And, well, if that fails, there are various other methods of hiding pills in food, we've heard about from various friends who had their own cat-medicating adventures. I'd see if the Pill Pockets work, first, though.

[seika]

My family has historically had really bad luck with those-- from refusing to eat the pill, to eating the Pill Pocket around the pill and spitting the pill itself back out-- and at least with the syringe you know it went down and has not been cleverly spit out behind the furniture somewhere. But we have not tried it on this current clowder of cats, so it might work with them-- don't know.

[jyasu]

This clowder's pretty clever. If they do try to pull a trick with pill pockets, I bet they'll spit it out in the litter box to be sure we won't go for it again :)

[crystalcascade]

We used the "hide it in cheese spread" method for our cats when we were young, but YMMV; ours were rowdy male semi-strays who didn't really care what they ate. ;)

[seirai]

Aww.
Is the pill something that can be crushed up into wet cat food? That's how we get Tabby her medication, but I know it doesn't work for all cats or all medications.

[jyasu]

The pill packaging explicitly said "no crushing". It's a time release capsule.

[tiramisu_milano]

When we would have to give diesel pills, we had to use a pill shooter. It was the only way it would go down and stay down and it took only a few seconds.

http://www.petsmart.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3215778

First, get the pill shooter ready. Then, we would wrap him up nice and tight in a towel....like a kitty-burrito...with only his head out. Then you can easily shoot the pill into the mouth.

[jyasu]

Yup, a pill shooter is what I used :) It wasn't so easy though, mainly because I don't have the reflexes to shoot the pill into her mouth and then clamp down on her mouth before she can get her mouth open again and spit it all out. I'm learning though...

[sethrenn]

Medicating cats in general is best done as a two-body job, we've found. What we usually do is to have one person hold them, and hold their head in place by grasping the scruff of their neck, while the other person squirts in the medicine.

[jyasu]

Yeah, I would fare better with three hands. I can swaddle Valeria up in a towel and rest her between my legs in a way that keeps her from squirming around her entire body, but still I need a hand for the medication, a hand to get her mouth open and a hand to hold her head still. I'm not very good at overloading the second and third tasks onto the same hand, but maybe with practice I'll improve.