Nah, learned long ago how to administer pills to cats with as little fuss as possible.
Set them on your lap with their butt down. You can even use your legs to trap theirs. Their spine straight up along your stomach, head under your chin. Use one hand to hold their neck under their chin to hold their head looking up. Use the other hand to get their mouth open and drop in the pill. Use the pill hand to hold their chest or front paws if they struggle, hold their head upright and stroke their neck until you’re sure they swallowed it.
Release the Cat!
No worries. I called her back for the Buprenorphine and she came walking right over.
Have you bought her a fountain yet? Lecture happening, can’t help it.
Cats don’t drink enough water. They evolved in the desert and got most of their water from their prey. Now that cats eat kibble, they live in a constant state of dehydration. This can cause UTI’s in both sexes.
Cats also need to drink filtered water. Their systems just don’t deal well with the calcium and other minerals in tap water. This often causes stones in males, which are very painful and expensive to treat.
Cat’s kidneys are much like ours, and need water to work properly. Their kidneys won’t flush properly if they are constantly dehydrated, which often leads to kidney failure. When a cat is in kidney failure, one of the things some owners do is give them sub-q fluids to flush the kidneys out.
So, in conclusion, IMO, the best way to keep a cat healthy is to keep them well hydrated.
Fountains make drinking water more attractive to many cats. Many cat owners will leave a bowl of water for their kitteh and then give them a running tap when they are home. I think that this is a bad idea, not only because of the minerals in the tap water, but also because that is probably the only time the running water liking cat gets a drink.
Canned food, even the cheap grocery store crap is better than kibble. I leave kibble out because everyone likes to snack during the day, but ours get canned food mixed with warm water twice a day.
She gets better than a can a day of this stuff (or the Chicken or Turkey varieties). Yeah, she’s spoiled rotten.
Bathtub tap is back to leaking, so she drinks from it. Seems to think her water dish is for playing with*. If I dare fill it, she splashes in it until it’s gone, so I just leave a little bit in there. I have an old table top sized water fall/fountain I used to have going in my old house for both white noise and moisture, but it has a leak that I need to patch before I could use it.
Of course, it doesn’t help that her all time favorite toy is ice cubes. I drop them in a special bowl with just a little water in it, she splashes around, drags them out and chases them around the apartment. I put them back, the game begins again, until they’re either gone, or under something.
So if there’s a fountain, she may think “ooo! bigger water toy!”
I hate that shit, too. I don’t run into it too often these days; the last egregious example I can think of is when I was looking for a car; the salesman refused to talk to me - he would ask a question of my husband, I would answer, then he’d ask my husband something else (after being told the car was for me). Jerk.
Brock moved to canned food a couple of years ago, when he had a case of bladder crystals leading to blood in his urine. In addition to clearing that up with meds, the vet told us to take him off the Meow Mix kibble, as it had too much magnesium and ash (he was already drinking all the water he wanted out of the dog’s bowl), and putting him on a Science Diet vets-only food. He liked the canned version okay, but it was really expensive, so I bought him a somewhat less-expensive kibble version of it.
Which he Would. Not. Touch. I picked up a few more cans of the gooshy stuff, checked the nutritional assay, and started calling grocery-store pet food companies, asking for assays of their canned food. I found the canned Friskies Dinners had magnesium and ash numbers that compared favorably to the Science Diet stuff, so I’ve been feeding him that ever since. And he has not been drinking from the dog’s water dish ever since.
He does make me give him one piece of the dog’s kibble every time I feed the critters.
Yeah, people are always asking me about which fancy boutique food to feed their cats. I tell them I feed mine Friskies. Purina has been in the pet food business for a long time, their stuff is fine. I do, however, add water to that canned food, too. Three tablespoons to each 5.5oz can, so to a 3oz Fancy Feast can, I would add a tablespoon plus two teaspoons - yeah it turns into a weird gruel-like watery mess, but they still eat it!
These ppl dont understand the power of the female dollar.
In 1987 BG (Before Google), I was looking to buy a Mazda RX-7. I asked the salesman to explain a fine point of the workings of the rotary engine and his reply?: “I could explain it, but you wouldnt understand.”
My reply?: “Then you dont understand it yourself, Sir.” Picked up my purse and walked out, checkbook in hand.
Chef Troy, I’m so sorry to hear about what happened. Short of doing a necropsy, or even a post-mortem x-ray, there’s no way to know what really happened. Honestly, from your description, it could have been heart failure and nothing to do with swallowing anything. Sometimes you can talk a veterinarian into doing a “professional interest” necropsy for no charge. Sometimes they’ll charge a nominal fee, and sometimes they just don’t really want to do one, often for lack of time.
You said the right thing to your daughter. {{{hugs to your family}}}
Forgot my rant du jour - I went for my usual long walk today, and OMFG, half of every sidewalk here is sheer ice at this point! We’ve had a thaw-freeze cycle from hell the last week or so - I honestly don’t know how I managed to not fall down while walking today. I love my outdoor walks, even in winter, but I might have to switch to mall-walking until the ice clears off.
The corollary of this rant is all the homeowners who haven’t done sweet FA to fix the ice on their sidewalks - I know a thick layer of ice is hard to work with, but you still have to take care of it before someone gets hurt. Chip it out, salt it down, sand it - whatever it takes.
My cat apparently has a very small bladder, which causes him urinary problems frequently. I got him the Wal-mart urinary kibble, which he would not touch, so I’m reduced to buying Purina urinary food from the vet at $29 every six weeks. Eek. The vet also told me to add warm water to a small Fancy Feast can and mix it together like a stew, and he loves that. He laps up all of the water and usually eats the gooshy stuff before chowing on the Purina kibble, which he loves. Since putting him on this regimen, he has had no problems. Knock on wood.
We have very hard water, and I asked the vet about that, and she said not to worry about it.
Yup. Had some salesman try to sell me a rear-wheel drive Mustang, IIRC, many years ago, when I had specifically told him that I wanted a front-wheel drive for winters in Minnesota and that I gave exactly zero fucks about sporty-looking cars. That dealership did not get my business.
The local hardware store hasn’t been too bad except for one guy who gave me a scoff-filled “you need to replace that door” comment in response to my looking for a draftstopper for an interior hallway-adjoining door with a big gap under it. Yes, that is true, but I’m not going to pay for a new door and rehanging it in a rental. I’ve taken care to lead with “I’m renting and…” for any similar requests since and it’s been fine.
Snipped for length…she’s not spoiled, she is just being worshiped as is her due! I love water playing cats, they are so funny and so cute.
You could put a fountain in the bathtub. That way she will get filtered water and won’t make a mess while you are gone.
Nods. The best critter food in the world is worthless if your pet won’t eat it.
Another vote for more water, and from someone who knows cats very well. Our fuzzy butts get grain free kibble to snack on. I noticed a big difference in their output when I made the change. I agree with you that Purina doesn’t want to kill their customer’s pets. They want repeat customers and their food is pretty good. Ours love slurping up their Fancy Feast soup.
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As long as I’m in lecturing mode, I have questions about that. If you have problems with hard water deposits in your sinks, doesn’t it stand to reason that cats might have problems with their pipes blocking up?
I don’t drink tap water. I’m not a snob about it, I’ll drink any filtered water offered, but I haven’t had a bladder infection since I stopped.
Cant find any research studies re: cats and hard drinking water, but in humans prone to idiopathic kidney stones its a factor:
Nepron1999;81 Suppl 1:66-70. Effects of water hardness on urinary risk factors for kidney stones in patients with idiopathic nephrolithiasis.
Bellizzi V, De Nicola L, Minutolo R, Russo D, Cianciaruso B, Andreucci M, Conte G, Andreucci VE.
Author information
Abstract
Both amount and timing of dietary calcium intake influence the recurrence of renal calcium stones. We have evaluated whether the hardness of extra meal drinking water modifies the risk for calcium stones. The urinary levels of calcium, oxalate and citrate, i.e., the main urinary risk factors for calcium stones, were measured in 18 patients with idiopathic nephrolithiasis, maintained at fixed dietary intake of calcium (800 mg/day), after drinking for 1 week 2 liters per day, between meals, of tap water and at the end of 1 week of the same amount of bottled hard (Ca2+ 255 mg/l) or soft (Ca2+ 22 mg/l, Fiuggi water) water, in a double-blind randomized, crossover fashion. As compared with both tap and soft water, hard water was associated with a significant 50% increase of the urinary calcium concentration in the absence of changes of oxalate excretion; the calcium-citrate index revealed a significant threefold increase during ingestion of hard water as compared with respect to soft water (Fiuggi water), making the latter preferable even when compared with tap water. This study suggests that, in the preventive approach to calcium nephrolithiasis, the extra meal intake of soft water is preferable to hard water, since it is associated with a lower risk for recurrence of calcium stones.
PMID: 9873217 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Note that this is applicable to calcium stones. Most cats are prone to struvite crystals IIRC.
“Struvite is a material that is comprised of magnesium, ammonium and phosphate.” Which are also found in hard water.
(((Chef Troy))) You did exactly the right thing, and I’m sorry about your fuzzy friend.
Big moving day today, started without power, because some yutz crashed into a utility pole. Ended without hot water at the new house, because some yutz (me) turned on the breaker to the water heater before turning on the water. The central heating doesn’t work yet, because some yutz (husband) was mistaken about whether the unit had previously been hooked up to natural gas or propane.
Huzzah!
So the girls and I are spending one last night at the rental house, and the boys are over at the new place, with space heaters… because I didn’t figure out the water heater thing until after business hours. Tony has shoulder surgery in the morning - has to be at the clinic at 5:45 am, and transport was already booked to get him at the new house. I hope the heater part is in tomorrow, and I hope I can replace a water heater element without killing myself or burning down the house.
I’m so goddamned tired. Tired of moving, tired of diy projects, tired of taking care of people and critters, of grocery shopping and bill paying and cleaning and cooking. Let’s face it, I’m exhausted.
Mama is taking a vacation next month. It might just be getting a hotel for the weekend, and sleeping as late as I want, eating what/when I want, and taking hours-long baths. And that sounds good to me!
Darned drama going on in my theatre group. I just hope that none of the orchestra members were scared away because of it, because we need all the orchestra members we can get.
He was a beautiful cat.