Markasaurus

Javier models a plastic E-collar and still manages to look good!

So your cat has been sick and needs to take medicine? No problem. Natasha’s cat Javier recently had surgery and now he needs to take antibiotics every day (twice). This has given me some first-hand experience in feeding pills to cats. You would thing that medicine for cats would come in smaller pills than the pills given to humans, but for some reason this is not the case. In fact, Javier (see above) needs to take one and a half pills to get the correct dose.

The first pill usually isn’t a huge problem if you have two people. One person has to restrain the cat and pry his mouth open (watch those fingers!) and the other person has to put the pill in his mouth and shoot water down his throat to get him to swallow it. Easy enough (ha). After the first pill, the cat has been warned. If you have to feed a second one, or God forbid a half-pill, this is where it gets tricky.

You can try to do what you did the first time, but the cat is usually a lot more resistant. Giving him some tuna between pills is one way to deal with it, but it’s not foolproof. Javier insisted on sticking out his tongue and spitting the half pill onto the floor. After a few minutes of doing this the pill started to dissolve and then he started salivating wildly in an attempt to get the horrible taste out of his mouth. We then put the remaining piece of the pill in his tuna, which he happily ate until he tasted the medicine again and then he wouldn’t stop licking his lips for several minutes as he attempted to get the taste out of his mouth.

Summary:

• Sneak up on the cat and get one pill in when it isn’t expecting it. Use lots of water and rub under the cat’s chin to get it to swallow.
• Give it some sort of food to distract it before trying again.
• Be persistent. At least be more persistent than the cat.
• Sometimes you can trick the cat by putting small bits of medicine in food if there is no other way to get it down.