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Another trick for pilling is to use your treat when you AREN'T about to pill. If you put the pill in wet food, give the wet food a few times a day without a pill. Same with yogurt, etc. If you only give the treat/chaser with the pill, the cat will be too stressed and reactive. You can very easily train the cat that when the wet food comes out, it means something bad is going to happen. If they never know when it's coming, the stress is lower and kitty might not fight as badly.
(I agree with other posters that I find pills much easier to give than liquids for all of my cats)
Another trick for pilling is to use your treat when you AREN'T about to pill. If you put the pill in wet food, give the wet food a few times a day without a pill. Same with yogurt, etc. If you only give the treat/chaser with the pill, the cat will be too stressed and reactive. You can very easily train the cat that when the wet food comes out, it means something bad is going to happen. If they never know when it's coming, the stress is lower and kitty might not fight as badly.
(I agree with other posters that I find pills much easier to give than liquids for all of my cats)
I really stink at giving liquid, but I hold the cat and my husband gives tiny amount from the syringe, little by miserable little, till it is done. For the stuff we can't put in food. My kittens are too dumb to avoid the liquid in their food; they lap it right up, thankfully.
So long as it is not a time release pill, with the easier cats, we use the mortar and pestle and grind the pill and put it in the wet. We make them very hungry so they will eat it up fast.
What a shame, a terrible shame. Can you please tell us how old your cat was when she did that so we can prevent ours from doing the same, all of us readers' cats.
She was fairly young. We took her in off the street, so it's hard to say exactly, but somewhere between 6 months a year. Other thank keeping a very clean apartment/home, I don't think there's a lot you can do. If a cat wants to swallow something, they'll probably do it. We got insurance on her afterwards that covers things like this and it costs about $18 a month or something like that.
As far as the pills, I got the Pill Pockets and those worked wonders. The liquid medicines via a syringe were still trouble, but I started giving her treats afterwards so while she was never happy about the medicine, she at least was better with it.
Interesting idea with the Pill Pockets and could be a good solution.
Our cat had surgery recently and has no appetite, but needs to take pills (plus some pain killer, but that just needs to be syringed onto his gums). The vet gave us a pill gun and said to just shoot them toward the back of his mouth. It is working, but traumatic. I've squired a couple ml of water into his mouth a half minute or so before, and then again right after he swallows. Don't know if it's pleasant for the cat, but the pill gun is what our (emergency) vet/surgeon recommended.
Interesting to read the different methods. I think it's a matter of changing strategies over time. A method may work for awhile then the cat gets smart and you have to switch to a new plan.
Right now I've mastered the "coat the pill in butter then clamp the cat between my thighs, grab her head from behind and tilt it back so the mouth opens then flick the pill down the throat and all this faster than a speeding bullet" method.
I love capsules best. I just split them open and mix the powder inside with a small amount of canned food, and the cat eats the food none the wiser. This may dilute the power of the medication or something like that, but it sure is the most stress free type of medication for cats.
The really hard medication is eye drops. I'm sure I've always gotten more all over me than in the cat's eye. Any good eye drop methods out there?
For pilling, I advise this: use a dot of something soft and wet she likes. You can try yogurt, even a little soft butter or cream cheese, or even a little favorite wet food, but yogurt or soft butter works better. Make sure you have everything ready, in a bowl is good. Pill, and spoon with a little yogurt (or whatever)
Use the holding position: Kneel on the floor with your feet crossed behind you, hold kitty between your knees facing out. S/he will try to back away and will not be able to.
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I tried to rep on this old post but can't. So you'll only get my long-winded reply.
After many trials over the last several days we have gone to this method after I went back and looked for it. It is not at all as smooth as you describe (which you admit) but it is getting doses into her. Except for that part in bold, this cat is too smart for that. She won't just back away she'll try to climb out and go forward and so forth. She's a feisty one.
I'm getting some gel capsules too that I stupidly never ordered in the intervening months after pill pockets stopped working. We had it working crushed in the cat milk. That worked until we wrecked it with the new appetite stimulant (cyproheptadine) which apparently is far worse tasting than the methimazole. It's only a tiny quarter pill but you should have seen the drooling when we were syringing it as a liquid suspension. Geez!
We solved the issue by having the medication compounded.
That works too but for the moment in my case at least I needed something more immediate.
In more general terms, liquid compounding wouldn't be that appealing I don't think (been there, done that with another cat and doesn't make it any easier IMO) so I was thinking of transdermal gel or chewables both of which are possible for methimazole at least. We'll see. Right now for me anyway it's lower on the priority list. Of course the only truly compounded liquid I ever used was lactulose which is just sticky and nasty no matter what flavor they add to it. But after finally trying pilling like this, we both agree it's better than liquid.
I'm just happy that yes, if other things fail and you are left with the problem, the method described can work even if it's the last thing you ever thought you'd want to do (kitty torture I still call these things). We're using butter because we already had it in the house.
Well, it works for about 2-3 times anyway. Then she won't open her mouth for nothing no matter what good stuff you dab on it. Last night's basically failed (I wasn't watching), and we had two of us this morning for several minutes, me holding her quite well compared to before, and we still only got one of the two pills in. It seems to be the "open the cat's mouth" bit that is impossible. Tilt the head back and there's supposed to be some natural action, but apparently this cat ain't natural?
Kitty torture. The sub-q is nothing in comparison. We get her to lie in one of her favorite beds and with that on the floor and fluid bag hanging at curtain rod height it only takes a couple minutes to get 200ml in. It's amazing how fast it goes actually. Have to hold her in the bed but compared to the pill thing she is completely calm.
I hope these gel caps help, should be arriving today. I'm still seeking out those Friskies hairball treats too (looks like it was a different thread where these were mentioned) because really I need a soft treat right now anyway and she won't eat a pill pocket even with nothing in it. She appears to be having trouble eating her regular Zukes treats even though she likes them (will be discussing with vet).
Also I want to say again that while you should discuss first with your vet, my current one said it was fine to crush tablets and mix with stuff yourself. This is what they do at the pharmacy anyway when they make liquid suspensions and so forth. Could be some meds are not effective this way though so best to ask vet. Also, your own handling can sometimes be a problem I suppose, although for most tablets this is not an issue. If you get compounded transdermal gel, you definitely need to be applying that with a glove or similar on.
We solved the issue by having the medication compounded.
We also have the meds compounded. Our compounding pharmacy can make the liquid any flavor and this prevents any stress on everyone's part. I recently saw that Walmart can fill pet prescriptions, but I don't know if they can put them in flavored liquid form. I just think that this is a gentler way of giving meds, especially to cats.
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