Search This Blog

Tuesday, July 13, 2021

The battle of giving your cat medication

Image: Business Upside

Majority of us knows what it's like giving medication to a cat either by oral liquid medication or a pill. We've heard many different stories on what it is like such as Lord of The Rings meme so it begins. 

There are many different ways of giving medication to a cat. There are different types depending on that cat's personality. 

Friendly; the type that we all wish all cats would react toward pushing a foreign object to give them through their mouth. If you have this type of cat, congratulations you figured out a very non invasive way to give it to them. Either crushing the pill or putting the liquid into their food and your cat doesn't notice it at all. If they smell it, they will place their paw over the bowl wiping bowl sign this is 💩 and plotting their next I am upset with you expression.

But for other types the semi-skittish type or extremely skittish or the come fight me it's going to take a lot more effort than what we really want. The most effective way of getting that done is the towel wrap method. Video by International Cat Care the time stamp you want is at 1:20. 

There are other ways as well, I use a very heavy thick throw blanket. I have handled all types mentioned from over the years of fostering and giving flea pills to my personal cats. Now if you're using a paste supplement like BeneBac Probiotics or Duralactin Feline L-lysine. Believe it or not it's a lot simpler to put it on a small dish and if they like the taste of it they will lick it off. If they don't place that gel on the roof of their mouth, close it and massage underneath the mouth to make their tongue clean it off through digesting it. 

My method of giving a pill for the 'ghost' cats if they have a favorite cat tree thats not completely huge for example this tree by Frisco 24.8 Heavy Duty Cat Tree could work. The cat tree I have might be a little taller than that one but to explain it we'll use this cat tree. 

If the cat tree is at your breast height and the cat is laying relaxed which is a good place you want them to be in. Place the folded heavy towel or blanket on top of them. They need to feel reassurance especially if it's a thick fleece like blanket. The face of the cat needs to be in the opposite direction away from your face. 

Lean in on the blanket like you're hugging a person from behind. This will make them feel stuck. The point is to make this very simple and quick. Do this after they had wet food (if your cat can eat wet food). It'll be so much easier for them to swallow that pill because it's captured enough saliva to make it go down. Gently open their mouth and give them the pill that way it has to go to the back of the throat. And hopefully this cat you have in your possession their teeth won't clamp onto you. 

Now during this whole process which I highly prefer incase the cat's claws were not trimmed those claws un-retracted will be going into that cat tree instead of you. When finished give them a second to make sure that pill went down, this process needs to be done quickly. And give them scritches for doing such a good job.   

This method can be used for liquid and clipping a cat's claws.  This blog will be updated in the future to show a homemade video of my method. 








 

No comments:

Post a Comment