My current rant is about my elderly cat, who keeps screaming at me for food then turning his nose up at it after about 3 bites. I’m also having to restrain him to get his medication down his throat because he has suddenly decided he doesn’t like pill pockets anymore.
He’d been doing so well, too. Gained weight, filled out…
Well done on the title! Sorry about the cat’s antics, though. I’m wondering now how I’m going to be when I’m the human equivalent of that age. Let’s hope he decides you’re taking care of him correctly and will take the offerings you proffer.
Are you allowed to switch up kitty’s diet or is it the expensive prescription food? One of ours is on Aopica which is bitter and only available in liquid form. Mixing that in wet food didn’t work very well, but then we started putting it on the cheap grocery store kibble we put out for the neighborhood cats, birds, raccoons and skunks, then putting it on his wet food. This has been working for about a year. I expect it will stop working tomorrow because I posted my secret online.
When I had to give my late kitty his chemo twice a day, I crushed the pills and mixed them with some condensed milk. He loved it. Of course I had to give some milk to the other cat, without the meds, and keep her from stealing his milk.
It’s expensive prescription food because in addition to being old, he has irritable bowel disease and is hyperthyroid. The food is for cats with sensitive stomachs. The only non-prescription food he gets is the pill pockets, and he used to inhale them. Now he usually licks them and sometimes eats about half, carefully leaving the pills behind.
I’m getting better at using the pill popper to drop his meds down his throat, but neither of us enjoy the experience. As for the food … I’m cutting off access after about 5 or 6 in the evening so that he is more inclined to eat in the morning. I can’t really switch his food because if I do, he starts throwing up.
Stupid cat. It’s a good thing I love him.
Silly annoyance: needed only a few things from the farmers market, so instead of heading down to the big market, where I always end up buying too much, I went to the smaller city market nearby.
One farmers stand. One. Three MLMs, two chiropractors, a half dozen Xmas (!) ticky tacky crafty booths, and a dozen other random booths.
And the one farmers stand didn’t have half of what I wanted.
Okay, about 15 miles away is a small grocer with really good produce, I’ll head that way, I’ve nothing else going on. Except the main entrance was closed for road repair. Signage indicated a detour… except it was also closed.
Ended up down at the big market. Me and seemingly every other Minneapolitan. And I bought too much.
When I had my fussy feline, Bernie, I had to pill her for her hyperthyroid problems. She also figured out the pill pockets and refused them. What worked for us is crushing the pill in a teaspoon of meat baby food. I don’t know if that would work with the IBS, obviously check with the vet.
I’ll ask him.
His hyperthyroid medicine is actually compounded into a gel pen that applies to his ear, because the pills made him throw up. The other two meds are pills: prednisone and metradamizol (sp?), the latter of which is from a compounding pharmacy.
This morning I didn’t bother with the pill pocket, I just grabbed him and used the pill popper to drop them down the back of his throat.
Coupla neighbors are in some stupid screaming match a house or two down, and it is so irritating. This is one noisy 'hood.
Actually, it’s really just one banshee shrieking at a house. Bitch, shut up!
Metronidazole
But why a compounding pharmacy, particularly? Those places are very expensive, aren’t they?
I don’t know.
If it is a medication usually given to an adult human, it may need to be formulated by a compounding pharmacy to create a small enough doses for a pet. I have gotten meds from one for my cats.
Background: I breed a species of rodent, as a hobby & to feed my snake & as a side hustle selling to other reptile owners or people interested in breeding ASFs for themselves.
Prospective new customers can take a LOT of hand holding. (“What colors do you have? Can I see pictures? I want a bulk deal! What do they eat? How many babies?”)
Google is your friend, on the last ones. LMGTFY.
But why, why, do people immediately ask “How many do you have?”
Tell me what you want, and I’ll see if I can accommodate. But you don’t walk into a grocery store and ask how many apples do they have in stock? No, you pick out the apples you want, however many you need, and they tell you the price.
Nobody is giving customers inventory counts of apples!
Human Metronidazole is either 250 or 500 mg. Cats are typically given 50 mg or 25 mg.
Sure, but googling “metronidazole for cats” and “shopping” I find several hits for veterinary-grade metronidazole in several strengths, at prices as low as twelve cents per dose.
Sure, you’re looking at 250 mg tablets. You can break a tablet into quarters, and try to get a quarter down a cat’s throat. The drug is horribly bitter, especially once it is broken into pieces.
Yeah, I see your point. I found exactly ONE supplier with 50 mg tablets charging $6.70/pill.
My mom has recently been motivated to clean out the back part of her walk-in closet. I got an email from her at work today, with pictures: “What is this?”
It’s mold. 
It’s not much; some flecks and splotches, up to about 3" off the floor. But it’s still mold. So far, it’s confined to one corner, where some cardboard boxes had been pushed directly against the wall. (The closet is adjacent to a bathroom; my mom takes very hot showers, and doesn’t believe in using the exhaust fan.) There are no water lines in that wall; that corner is on an outside wall, but everything on the outside of the house looks fine.
We’ll see how bad it really is once she clears the rest of the closet out; a quick check of the accessible areas reveals nothing but dust and a few cobwebs.
It’s time for today’s edition of 
Cat Drama !
Bad: Samantha Cat has been pooping outside of the catbox since Saturday night.
Good: The first time it was solid.
Bad: Every other time has not been solid.
Good: She’s been doing it on the bathroom which has a tile floor.
Bad: Except the two times she did it in my bedroom which is carpeted. 
This resulted in a call to The Vet.
Good: They were able to get her in this evening.
Bad: Samantha sang The Song of Her People all the way to the vet, all the way into the office, in the examining room, back out to the car, and all the way home.
Good: It’s just a bacterial infection which can be treated with pro- and antibiotics.
Bad: I have to squirt medicine into her mouth for the next ten days.
But that’s not all! This is the Casa de Cinco Gatos so there are four more cats in this drama!
Good: I was able to lock out the four tabbies downstairs so she could have some quiet time.
Bad: The tabbies are not happy that they’re being locked out and keep trying to dart upstairs whenever I open the door. They also keep banging on the cat door.
Good: A sheet of notebook paper covers the cat door perfectly so they can’t keep staring inside and having hissing matches through the door.
Bad: Cats have object permanence so they know there’s a door there and that they’re not allowed in.
I’m going to be tripping on tabbies on the stairs for the next week.
Oh, much sympathy for your adventures with a poopy cat. Were you able to go in with her? Our vet didn’t allow people inside the building for quite a while. While I’m sure that the vet treatment will clear things up very quickly, it might not hurt to give her some canned pumpkin. (Just the pumpkin, not the stuff you pour into a pie.) Cats is weird, most of them like the stuff and it helps firm up the poops.
During the early part of the stay at home orders, one of our male cats developed a bladder infection late on a Sunday night. We were in our vet’s parking lot before the employees Monday morning. A worker came out to ask why I was there so early and I explained the issue. She took my cat right in and said the vet would see kitty first.
That morning must have been dog morning, because everyone that showed up after me had dogs. It was hot, so everyone had their dogs out of the cars and everyone was social distanced while the workers were checking folks in. Then a man showed up with a teen-aged golden retriever. All legs and feet and happy and OMG LOOK AT ALL OF THESE NEW FRIENDS!!!
Watching all of the dogs being forced to socially distance when they didn’t have a clue what was happening was really sad.