Struggling…. I tried putting the content in their food and no luck either
Thanks for the tips :)
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Why don’t they make cat (and dog) pills taste like a treat? It can’t be that hard!
I’ve found that if you hold the cat in your lap, use the finger and thumb of one hand to wiggle on either side of their face where their mouth begins to open their mouth, if you can then get the pill on the very furthest part of their tongue closest to their throat, there is an automatic reflex to swallow. I used to try putting it in their food and it never worked. This worked every time.
I would use the Meow Mix Irresistibles soft treats and wrap it around the pill. With my last cat, she associated the pill bottle with treats over time and would just take the pill by itself as a treat!
Late in life, she was having a lot of health issues, and one of the pills she had to take was bitter and without a coating. It ended up ruining the Irresistibles treats for her and I couldn’t get her to take them for the life of me.
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
I use a pill gun like this one then immediately follow up with a treat. He hates the pill but the sooner that’s over with the sooner he gets the treat, and we have to do it again if he manages to spit the pill out. Treat doesn’t come until the pill is swallowed.
Pill pockets are the only way we can get our cat to take her pills. But we’ve had to put the pills into little gelatin capsules and wrap those in pills pockets because the pills are bitter. If my cat gets a taste of the bitter pills and the pill pocket, she’ll never eat the pill pocket flavor again.
Pill pockets
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.
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.
That’s the neat part: you don’t.
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There’s a technique to hold their jaw and put the tablet at the back of the tongue which I’ve had success with, but I hate doing it. Look it up before trying because my memory is fuzzy.
I’ve had great luck though with pulverizing the shit out of a pill (uncoated, prednisone) and mixing with wet food. Like to powder with the back of a spoon, not just chunks.
This is the way.
I do this every night with 2 pills. I just did it 3 minutes ago, in fact.
Lay cat in lap. Grab head and kinda hold/lightly pinch cheeks with left hand. With right hand force your fingers pinching the pill into the back of the throat. Push it as far back as quickly as you can with your pointer finger. Hold him to make sure it gets swallowed.
Apologize and give him a little scratch and kiss.
🤔 this seems like “How to transform your domesticated cat into a tiger 101”
Basically it feels like you’re trying to see the inside of a python’s throat. Equally as dangerous.
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
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. You have to secure the back hips against you with your arm or elbow.
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.
There’s something I call a “pill stick”, into which you put it in the barrel, jam it into the cats mouth while holding their jaw and then push the trigger. Requires a little finesse but easier than other methods.
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.
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.
