Adventures in pilling a cat
If you are reading this, there's a chance you have a cat. And that you've either attempted to pill your cat, and succeeded... or, failed miserably.
Try pilling THIS cat.
This is Maple, my senior kitty. She's 14 years old and a 15-lb lovable little curmudgeon. She gets 5mg of Prozac every day. I had tried all of the following things to get her to take her meds: - Pill pocket (alone) - Liver sausage ball - Liver sausage ball that has been in the fridge
- Pill pocket rolled in crushed Temptations
- Liver sausage ball roller in crushed Temptations
- Sticking a Temptation right onto the Pill pocket
- Sticking a Temptation right onto the liver sausage
- Bribing with more Temptations
- Pill gun (massive failure)*
- Compounded liquid (massive failure)*
* Maple is a freak of nature. Normally you tip the head back, and the mouth opens slightly. Her? No. Her jaw and lips form a tight impenetrable seal. The Fort Knox of cat mouths.
The biggest thing for her is the moment she tastes it, she's done. No more. She walks away, and you no it's a lost cause at that point. Nope, nope, nope. Oh, and while I did EVENTUALLY get the pill/compounded liquid into her mouth, it ended up freaking her out. I didn't want to make my cat get all freaked out while trying to give her anxiety meds! This also ruled out anything involving holding her or rolling her up in a towel. Awhile back, I read about another trick. This was my last ditch effort, which I finally tried last week. I took the half-pill of Prozac, stuck the cut end into the smaller half of an empty gel cap, put THAT into a pill pocket, and stuck a Temptation on it. It took a few variations of this to find something that actually worked. But this seems to have worked! She's even dropped the gel capped pill a few times, which made me think she'd figure it out. But nope, she eats that too, no problem. Moral of the story - where there's a will, there's a way. Sometimes it takes months and a lot (LOT) of trial and error, but it's there, just waiting to be discovered. And yes, that even applies to pilling your cat.