I’ve tried the plunger thing to give my cat pills and it was a miserable failure. The cat fought off two full grown adults and a burrito wrap on several occasions (kidjanot…two twenty-somethings each 15x bigger than the cat and she fought off our big brained combined efforts). We figured she’d live or die on her own as there was no way she was going to take any medicine. Turns out the cat was way too cranky and mean to die and she pulled through fine but I cannot imagine having to force feed her.
That said my cat (the one just mentioned…other one is nice) is ornery as hell and she was young and strong. My friend’s cat is old and far more compliant and friendly. It hates getting the Pepcid pill and fights a bit but not too hard…more just an indication she really is not enjoying what is going on.
What worries me more about force feeding is choking the cat. Do you just squirt the food in the mouth and hope it swallows or do you actually try to squirt food down the cat’s throat (gently of course but still force it)?
It involves (gently, all of this) forcing the cat’s mouth open by sticking your fingers in at the corners, all the while having the syringe at the ready. When the mouth opens, you squirt the food in, but toward the back of the throat. The syringe will be positioned at the side of the cat’s mouth, toward the back. That way, the cat can’t just use its tongue to immediately expel the food. Its only choice is to swallow it, since it’s sitting at the back of the throat. The cat will gulp it down and make chewing motions, and maybe a little will spill out, so you’ll have a wet cloth handy for cleanups.
The only way to choke the cat is to get the food into its windpipe, and that’s not going to happen. The food is going into the mouth, but way in the back, like where the tongue is attached.
I got very, very good at it. Three times a day for a month - I could get half a can of food into that cat in 15 minutes. It takes a little getting used to, but it’s really not as difficult as it might sound.
All my cat needed was this jumpstart. Hopefully your friend will be similarly successful if they must resort to this method.
Our cats were sick in the hospital around Christmas, also refusing to eat, and on 24 IV.
The vet injected them with Valium intravenously to stimulate their appetites, explaining that it has different effect on cats. It worked like a charm on one of them.