Struggling…. I tried putting the content in their food and no luck either
Thanks for the tips :)
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I had a friend claim that once someone else was sitting on the floor holding the cat, he would use a straw like a dart blowgun, and shoot it right into the cats mouth.
Lol
I clamp the cat between me and a wall whilst petting and then gently open his mouth and after massage the pill down. If we do it elsewhere he will scratch and go mayhem, this way he stays still and calm
Method I use because my cats are really tolerant:
- Open mouth gently and give treat
- Repeat couple of times
- Feed pill with a treat
- ???
- profit
Depends on your cat. My cat, I kind of cradle the back of her head, behind her ears in one hand, (think scruffing but not scruffing bc that’s not nice). With my dominant hand (the hand to the front of her, I come at her from the side), I lift her chin, open her mouth with a finger, and with my index finger push the pill to the back of her tongue.
She’s had to take a lot of pills in her life so we have it down pat. But it’s mostly about being firm but not scaring them.
I grind it like, snorting fine, and sprinkle it wet food and stir, has always worked for me.
Remember to check with your veterinarian if it’s okay to pulverize the pills, some medications are slow release and crushing them is probably bad
Oh good to know thanks!
My cats will eat anything if it’s served with Churu. That stuff is wild. Just a blob of Churu in my hand with the pill in it and the cat’s so into licking the Churu they don’t even realize they just took a pill.
The daily injections though, those weren’t fun. Especially once he started feeling better and had energy to fight us.
Pill pockets
I make pockets from meat.
- Cut meat into bits of one cubic centimeter.
- Cut pocket with scissors or knife. One incision makes a pocket.
- Cut pill into ~10 fragments and insert into the pockets with tweezers. Squeeze the pocket open to avoid touching the outside of the meat bit with the bitter pill fragment.
Plus Purina FortiFlora probiotic stuff. It’s irresistible powder my vet recommended, and it works amazing if you shake the pill pocket in that stuff
Might I recommend the Inaba Churu pockets? We’ve been jamming pills into our girl’s hell-scented maw for years but these have made such a huge difference. We insert one pill per pocket and she pounces on and gobbles them up. Now giving her pills is fun instead of leaving us with terrible smelling fingers served with a side of feline childhood trauma.
This is the most effective for my cat, but just be sure they don’t eat the treat around the pill and then spit the pill out.
Last time we gave my gf’s cat a deworming tablet it was a team effort. I held him down with his legs in my hands, her dad held his head still and his jaw open and her mum put the tablet in his mouth (it took her four or five tries because the dumb moggy loves to spit them out).
Pill pockets can work, but some cats will eat around the pill.
Personally, I’ve had the most success using cheese slices. As in, the highly processed plastic wrapped “cheese”. Tear off a bit, wrap it around the pill and kinds of smoosh it around the pill, and just like that, it’s irresistible to kitties.
That’s the neat part: you don’t.
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Use your fingers to open their mouth/jaw. Place pill as far back as you can reach. Hold their mouth shut. Lift their head slightly and semi-aggressively stroke their neck which will force them to swallow. Double check they didn’t houdini the pill at any point along the way.
Just so ya know, if you go with crushing up the pill, check with your vet to make sure its not extended release or something. Sometimes the pill is meant to slowly dissolve over time and crushing it up frontloads the dose and can cause problems. The prescriber/your vet will know if its safe.
Good point! Thanks for letting me know
We used a two person system.
One held the cat close to their body, securing the front paws against the cat with one hand and securing the head with the other hand.
The other pushed the pill into the cat’s mouth, held it shut and stroked the throat.
After a few months the cat realized struggling wasn’t worth the effort and only tried to claw our faces off if we got complacent.
We miss her very much.
you can usually bury it in a chewy treat or pill pocket. with bigger pills I break it in half and use two chewy treats.
This is the way we give our cat his pill twice a day. The people down below talking about jamming it down a cats throat seem a little insane to me.
My cat has a fungal infection in his brain and requires one pill twice a day. Been doing this for sevenish years. He’s the only cat I’ve ever had, so take this with a grain of salt, but I just get him on my chest and pet him until he starts purring. Then I use a finger to open his mouth and push the pill to the back of his throat, and immediately go back to petting him. He swallows it, and sometimes gags for a second. But, I do it really quickly, and usually it’s over quick enough that he doesn’t even stop purring. YMMV
