He doesn’t likes his medicine. Roomie tried to mix it into his wet food last week, and he boycotted wet food for a couple of days. So the nasty-tasting anti-biotic has to be squirted down his throat with a syringe. He’s a strong cat, so I have to hold him down while roomie does the deed.
His yowls! You’d think we were murdering the little darling!
Sitting on a chair or the toilet seat in the bathroom (easier to clean up hard surface floor if they puke it up)
Cat’s back against my chest, upright. Claws away from my body.
Using my legs to clamp down on can’t hips so hind legs are not going anywhere.
One hand holding front legs and throat, forcing head up and backwards against my chest.
Wrap him in a towel. It’s easier to keep the cat under control.
If you have a cat who refuses to swallow a pill, though, it’s hell. You end up crushing pills and mixing it with stuff and trying to force that in their mouths… gah. I’ve lately started to just mix the crushed tablet in a bit of canned food and wipe it on his face and paws, figuring he’ll get the meds by cleaning himself.
My idiot cat got scratched in the eye while playing with the braindead cat. I’ll bet all of you cat people can imagine how much fun it is to put eye ointment in a cat’s eye. For you dog people, cats dont forgive after bacon. They get bladder infections which means more meds.
Yep, been there done that. Many times. There is an option to get liquid meds compounded at the pharmacy into tuna flavored stuff. It’s expensive and finding a pharmacy that will do it is tough. But it worked for me and I’d do it again. Then it is pretty easy to mix it into canned food. Good luck! Cats are tricky.
I found a way to get liquid drugs into my hard to medicate cat!
One of my cats has been having seizures, and is now on Phenobarb. It’s liquid, and supposedly tuna flavored, but he hates it. I can do it via syringe, but it isn’t fun for either of us.
He’ll mostly eat it in canned food if I use a little food and add water to make it soupy. But in looking for a better treat, I tried the pouched food. And then I had a brainstorm - he really only likes the juice in the pouched food, so I just made a small opening in it and squeezed out all the goo onto a small plate. Add in the meds, stir well, and serve. He licks the plate clean and thinks he’s getting something special
People, people, people. Do you take pills dry? No you don’t. If you put the pill in the back of the kitty’s mouth, then use a syringe to squirt a little bit of water behind it, kitty will swallow the pill and the water, just like you do.
You still have to hold kitty down, but pills are easier.
The cat’s half-pill gets crushed and mixed into a little bit of wet food. (He demands wet food, but only half a teaspoonful or so.) He doesn’t mind the taste.
The new anti-biotic is nasty-tasting. Roomie tasted it and said it’s very bitter, and she had an aftertaste for an hour. It’s a liquid, so it gets squirted.
Roomie just went to work, so the cat got his orbifloxacin early today. He was sleeping on her bed, and she brought him out to the living room. He quickly snuggled into his ‘fort’ (the crook of my knees and the back of the couch) and went to sleep. I suggested she try to medicate him while he was asleep. She sat down on the couch, grabbed his head, and shot the syringe into his mouth. He squirmed when he realised what was happening, but he was blocked in by the couch and my legs. He had nowhere to go.
It was the easiest shooting-liquid-down-his-throat yet. Seven down, only 23 more days to go…
One of our cats is a rescue - he is all muscle, weighs in at 22 lbs, and has HUGE teeth and claws. He’s also the most timid and sweet of all our cats.
…except when he’s scared, which he is of everything that isn’t myself or my husband being very still and calm. (Rescue cats. Always a catch.) He has to be sedated once a year for his dental/well-cat checkup, as well as (god forbid) any time he’s getting an exam because he’s sick.
He does NOT get pilled.
He had an infection one time, and the vet suggested pills (over the *sedated *cat he had just finished examining) and I just looked at him. He then very casually suggested that we could accomplish the same thing by coming in every afternoon for a week and getting one of the nurses to give him a shot, but that it would be more expensive.
It wasn’t as expensive as multiple trips to the ER to get stitched and blood transfused, so kitty got a fun week of going to the vet every day. By the end of the week, it was nearly impossible to get him out from under the furniture - he didn’t trust us any more.
Nurse had an interesting cross between a straitjacket and a cat carrier that she fed him into from our own carrier, and then stuck him while he was all enmeshed inside. Worked pretty well, although from the sounds of it, you would have thought he was getting things amputated in there.