Here’s the scenario. Our cat Ashes had lost weight and when tested her thyroid was through the muthafuckin roof. On one test where “normal” is 2.5, she came back 20.9.
My vet put her on 1 pill (3.5mg) of ?topomax? and we retested in 2 weeks. She was down to 10 with no concerning change in kidney function. Doc increased dosage to 1.5 pills. she was just retested saturday, which I’m waiting for results but she gained half a pound so its looking good. Ashes already looks visibly healthier (better coat, etc).
So I’m thinking she will either continue at 1.5 or go to two. Ashes will take 1 pill ground up in a teaspoon of meat baby food, but for some reason that makes sense only to cats she will reject 1.5 pills ground up into a greater amount of the same food. So we’ve been giving her one pill by mouth, and the 1/2 ground up in the baby food immediately afterward as a treat.
She’s not a terrible piller, and my husband’s pretty good at it, but doing that twice a day, forever, sounds like a bit of a drag. I read about a version of the medication that’s in a liquid suspension, and you rub it into their ear.
Anyone tried it? Pros/cons? Problem solved by SCIENCE or more trouble than its worth?
Note: I know about the radioactive iodine treatment, but Ashes may not be a good candidate because of her heart murmur.
I used it for a few months on my 12 year old female, Minx. It worked well and then Minx decided she didn’t like having her ears rubbed twice a day even though the ears weren’t irritated. She would hide under the bed and not come out.
I was able to use pills for a few months using pill pockets and then I discovered a stash of licked and semi-eaten pills under the bed. I then tried crushing the pills into wet food but that didn’t work too well.
So, now I’m using Science Diet y/d formula food and it has completely solved the medication problem. If Ashes is your only cat, the medicated food could be an option although it is pricey.
There are many meds available as transdermals, not all of them work as well as advertised. That said, methimazole is one that does work very well and I know many who use it with success. It’s a paste, as opposed to a liquid suspension that would be given orally - though that’s an option too.
Ask your veterinarian about getting a scrip for it or if they use any compounding pharmacies they could call it in for you (Wedgewood is one of the most popular, but there are several). There are lots of options, going through all of them could be a little expensive until you find one that works long-term. There are flavored tablets, chew-treats, and suspensions that can all be given orally. The tablets, if she won’t eat them, can at least still be just pilled and used up. The transdermal that’s used on the ear will cost you probably $15-$20 a month, plus you should get finger cots for yourself to apply it so you don’t absorb any through your finger. You don’t have to do a lot of rubbing in like you would with lotion on yourself, just smear it thin enough to absorb and not be shaken or wiped off with a paw.
SeaDragonTatoo thanks, it’s really hard to get an idea of what the transdermal will cost on the various websites. Even a ballpark is helpful. The pills aren’t free either, and we are lucky that the cost of meds is not burdensome for us.
My parents had a cat with this problem, and there is a pharmacy in their city whose business is 90%-plus veterinary compounding. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that there is a college of pharmacy in their town.
Any large city will have a pharmacy that does this kind of thing regularly, and the vet will know where it is. If your town doesn’t have one that can, your vet will know where to send the prescription to have it filled.
Theoretically, any pharmacy could do it, but a drugstore that doesn’t do a lot of compounding (custom-made dosage forms) probably won’t have the equipment to make a pharmaceutically elegant (yes, that is the correct name) product.
We had a hyperthyroid cat and couldn’t justify spending $2,000 for radioactive iodine. But once the pills made her more stable, we spent around $300 for thyroidectomy. She lived a few years longer until her kidneys eventually failed. Our vet said the surgery (for her) was very simple.
I used the ear rub with a cat a few years ago. I tried it for about two months, IIRC, but the vet wasn’t happy with her thyroid numbers. I switched to the pill, which I wound up hiding in a spoonful of her wet food. She had to eat that before she could have the rest of her wet food. It worked most of the time.
I also have a hyperthyroid cat, and while I’ve not tried the transdermal med, for us it would have been six times more expensive, and as I understand it, it’s much harder to get the dosage consistent because various environmental factors affect how well it absorbs.
Anyway, if your cat won’t do 1.5 pills in her spoonful of food, what about giving her the 1 pill she will take, and put the half pill in a second, separate spoonful of food? It may just be that the concentration of the pill is higher, even with the extra food. It’s bitter tasting, so if the flavor isn’t well-disguised she won’t like it.
I’d also check out compounding pharmacies. They can make your bitter pills into soft tuna/turkey/whatever chewies. My elder cat couldn’t take the antibiotic liquid we had tried (it got so bad that after a day he would start to dry heave just at the sight of the oral syringe). But he LOVED the tuna chewies. And my other cat was sorely disappointed that he didn’t get any.
I’d also try really “stinky”/strong-flavored canned cat foods to disguise it in – tuna, salmon, etc. We use about a tablespoon of canned, gravy-heavy cat food (he loves the gravy, and it helps dissolve the pill). His dosage is smaller, half a pill (2.5 mg, I believe) in the morning, 3/4 at night (3.75 mg). But he doesn’t seem to notice the pill at all; in fact he’ll bug us about getting his “treat” to the point that he’s better at remembering it than we are.
We use a variety of flavors, tuna, salmon, whitefish, chicken, turkey, beef, and we just use Fancy Feast (gravy lovers and grilled both have gravy in it). We’ve had no problems, which was most definitely not the case when we just tried to pop the pill down his throat. He would hook his claws into my hands and drraaaaag them away from his head. OW!
Also, FWIW, I find it easiest to dissolve the pill in a couple drops of water, and then plop the cat food on top of it and mix it together. Crushing the pill can get messy, and it dissolves really easily.
Ashes thyroid came in perfect so she’ll remain on 1.5 pills 2x/day.
The vet said she’d had some success with ear rubs, but we’d have to begin the dose-balancing process again. While we thought about that, she agreed to get samples of the chewy, to see if Ashes will eat them.
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In the meantime we’ve been using pill pockets and they work fine but DANG they’re expensive. it costs $8 for a bag of 45, that lasts us 11 days. Unless the chewies are more than about $80/mo, they’ll be cheaper than what we’re doing now.
The vet also gave me a sample of something called “pill wrap” which is a dense paste that smells of bacon… you pick up a bit and sort of make your own pill pocket using as much or as little as you want. Sounded pretty good to me, but I don’t think Mr. Again liked the idea of handling the smelly stuff twice a day very much. He gave it a most doubtful look.
In a couple weeks we’ll have a fresh physical exam, see if the heart murmur’s better, and think about whether we want to consider other treatment options. For now Ashes is looking and feeling well, so we’re going to continue with the pills.
Thanks everyone for your ideas and input. It was really helpful to learn about the options that are available.
Another dosing method. When we had a hyperthyroid cat, my gf crushed the tablets in a mortar/pestle then mixed the powder into meat baby food. The cat loved meat baby food, luckily.
As I mentioned in the OP, we had tried this and it worked up to a point then failed. For my old cat Bandit, this was a surefire dosing method … Ashes just isn’t as impressed.
I have a hyperthyroid cat, she is 17 1/2 years old. We tried various methods of pilling her and finally found after trying various types of cheese, her two favorites are Gouda and cheapo American fake cheese in the individually plastic wrapped slices, go figure. She likes the cheese so much that when it is near time for dosing she frequently starts annoying one of us. And we have to double check with each other that she doesn’t get extra doses by conning us for more cheese. Both these types of cheeses are soft enough that they really stick to the pill, sounds a lot like her bacon paste thing.
My vet didn’t offer the ear treatment, but did give us a sample of special food for Hyperthyroid cats. She (the hyperthyroid cat) didn’t like it at all and wouldn’t eat it. and our other cat that doesn’t have a thyroid problem would gobble it down. So that option didn’t work for us.
I’ve had two hyperthyroid cats. One of them was fine with the ear rub. The other would hide and it was also a disaster trying to get any medicine into her any other way.
Forgot to mention this but, weirdly, I tried to dissolve the pill and it was virtually impervious! It wouldn’t dissolve at all, and I even tried partially crushing it and then letting it stand a half hour, and it was still just chunks in water, just as solid as when I started.
By contrast I found the pills easy to crush by pressing it gently between two teaspoons. No idea why I had such different results from Kaio but I know in human medicines sometimes different inert ingredients are used by different manufacturers, though the active ingredient is the same.
