We have a cat with renal failure and need to start giving him Pepcid. He haaaaates getting pills. I’ve found “Pill Pockets” advertised online. They are supposed to be cat treats you can hide the pill inside. Anyone know anything about them?
A friend of mine had to pill one of her cats daily for a while. He hates meds of any kind so she thought she would try the pill pockets. It was a treat, all right - he ate the pocket carefully away from the pill, leaving it on the floor.
The best way I’ve ever found to pill a cat is to coat it in butter - it’s harder for them to get that raspy tongue around it and spit it across the room.
We have three cats. On two of them, Pill Pockets work like magic. On Her Royal Highness the Princesscat Bridget, however, they are as the pea in the mattress: politely ignored until someone else brings it up at breakfast.
Our vet let me take home a sample for taste-testing, which, given how expensive they are, I highly recommend.
If you, too, have a Princesscat, I recommend a fast-moving assistant, a thick bath towel, and a “pill syringe”. I got ours online somewhere; if I remember or figure out where, I’ll repost.
feed a pill to a cat… in 3 easy steps…
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get cat, pet until purring, feed treats… suddenly force cat’s mouth open and push pill in as far as possible, clamp cat’s mouth shut
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Return from hospital… tend to sticthes and cuts/ scratches as dr advises
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repeat as needed…
my cat is fine… I may regain use of little finger by July…
FML
I have a cat that has to have pills every day and I’ve had good luck using moist treats like Whisker Lickings. I stuff the pill inside a treat and she usually gobbles it right down. I give her two or three more treats to make sure everything goes down. Every once in a while she’ll drop the pill as she eats the treat but I just put it in another one and try again. It’s rare that I have to force feed her the pill. Of course she’s a really laid-back little animal so that helps. Treats are cheaper than the pill pockets for sure.
method #2
disolve meds in in mouse food
feed food to mice
feed mice to cat
FML
This sort of thing works fine with my cats, who are normally experts at spotting when their food’s been tampered with:
Wrap the cat in a towel, pinch its mouth at the hinges of its jaws to open, drop pill down back of its throat, and stroke its throat till it swallows.
Or not.
I nursed a cat through renal failure for over a year.
My advice: get your vet to show you how to pill a cat. There’s a technique to it that’s pretty easy to learn. Basically, you need to squeeze his mouth open and put the pill past the “bump” in his tongue, then close his mouth. He’ll swallow it right up.
Other advice: once he gets to the point where he’s taking more than one pill at a time, go buy gel-caps at your local pharmacy, and use them to make multiple pills into one pill. Giving cat one pill is easy. Giving him 2 or 3, twice a day, is a hassle.
Once you settle into the groove of it, it’s not so bad. Think about your breaking point, though. For me, it was when the vet said that the cat was going to need fluid injections daily. Yes, you can do this at home. Yes, some cats are OK with it. Mine was not - his quality of life was spiraling down. Hard decision, but easier if you’ve had a year to think it through.
Poor kitty. I hope he pulls through for a while.
I came in here to sing the praises of compounded medicine. It is expensive, but I put my 17 year-old cat’s fish-flavored medicine in his canned food and he eats it all up. I don’t think it’d be worth it for Pepcid though, since it is already OTC and fairly cheap.
Are you giving sub-qs? My old guy is actually CRF too, but he has some other issues (his heart, mainly) that have made us stop the sub-qs. Cats can live for years with renal failure though. Theres some good CRF Yahoo groups if you need support.
My old kitty needs meds 2x/day - luckily they’re very small pills. Post 4 above pretty much summed up the initial attempt.
So now we switch it up. I’ll put a pill in a small dollop of cream cheese. Or I’ll tuck it into a chunk of burger. Usually I put it in some canned food which she gets twice a day.
Somewhere around here I have a pill syringe dealy, but she’s such a twitchy cat anyways that if she even sees it in my hand she’s off to hide.
We used to buy whitebait for this purpose; the cats did chew them up a bit, but still swallowed them mostly whole with the pill undetected inside.
Watch your fingers though - the fish was so enthusiastically accepted that our cats would try to bat them out of our hands and snag them with their claws - resulting in a few nasty scratches.
Maybe this will work for you. 
I also had a kitty with bad kidneys, and actually did the opposite from you, Athena. My boy would get awfully agitated about taking Pepcid, so I let it go, but he didn’t mind the needles so much. Of course, after a while, it wasn’t right to put him through any more treatment. I miss that cat every fucking day.
Sorry about your kitty, jsgoddess. Make his time happy, as much as you possibly can.
That sounds like Orson. He’s just becoming so stressed over the whole pill-taking routine that it may be worse for him than not getting the pill at all.
We haven’t done fluids with him (yet). We’ve done that with two other cats. One hated it, and one took it in stride.
I always crush pills (after asking first if it’s OK) and mix it into my cat’s moist food, same for my fussy dog. You can get a pill crusher at the pharmacy for a few bucks and save yourself a LOT of hassle.
I’ve been pilling our cat for a decade now. He’s relatively cooperative – tries to run away or spit it out, but otherwise lets you do it.
I put him on his back, pry his mouth open and toss the pill to the back of his throat. Usually works fine.
I have to pill my hyperthyroid cat twice a day. I can’t sneak it into her food because she chews any non-kibble offerings thoroughly. I grab her evil pointed tortoiseshell head, pop her jaws open, drop the pill to the back of her throat, close her mouth and unless I miss and get it in her cheek, the pill is gone. I poke the side of her jaw to doublecheck, then give her a treat as an apology. I then stand back so she can pound the crap out of the nearest cat to recover her dignity. She forgives me very quickly but once my husband tried to pill her and she wouldn’t go near him for almost a year. The catsitter can’t pill her either which makes it hard to take a weekend away.
I worry about her quality of life but right now she seems stable. Good luck with your boy, jsgoddess. I hope you find a way to pill him easily.
We’ve used the Pill Pockets for three days now, with great success. The only problem is Orson wants the treats with or without pills. He’s very moochie!