I hide the pil in a piece of food. Depending on the cat, I knead some cheese around it, or hide it in a piece of canned meat (which they only rarely get). If they don’t fall for it (which happened way back when my ex spoilt them rotten), I just starve them for a bit. My cats are used to being able to have dry cat food anytime they like (a privilige they use about 10-20 times a day, though always small quantities, they’re definitely not fat) so if I bar that possibility from them, they start becoming less troublesome about it very soon.
The hardest is dealing with a cat who’s so sick s/he won’t eat. It’s worse when they’re sick enough to not eat, but not sick enough to make it very hard to give them a pill the old fashioned way. Then, a blanket often does really work quite well.
I’ll second the vote for pill pockets. The first time I tried using them on a cat I was thinking , “right, like this is going to work” but the cat (who wasn’t very nice and kinda picky) snarfed it right up.
A word of cation about compounding pharmacies - Some are good and use good laboratory practices. But others are only out to make a buck, and a few are downright criminal and know it. There are plenty of medications that are not absorbed through the skin, but some compounding pharmacies will go ahead and put them in a gel for you anyhow just to get the $$.
Also, once a drug has been altered by a compounding pharmacy, the original drug company bears no responsibility for any adverse effects.
The board of the American Association of Equine Practioners Meeting began a practice of insisting that only compounding pharamcies that did not break the law and used good pharmacy practice guidelines could set up booths at their meetings. When they did that, they went from 36 compounding pharmacies requesting booth space to 3 (which gives you a pretty good idea of the ratio of ethical compounding pharmacies to those that are not).
Small animal folks (cat veterinarians and their clients) haven’t seemed to catch on to this yet.
By the way, the little ‘rubber tipped wand’ is called a balling gun. thats what i use to medicate cats at work. my boss can do it by hand, but that only works about 75% of the time. i, on the other hand, am less experienced and like to avoid bleeding.
That’s a good idea. Certainly better than my idea for alternate delivery of feline medication: the suppository. At least it would also probably keep your cat from doing that “look at my ass, daddy!” thing.