Giving a cat a tablet

Tranceypoo

I've tried crushing it and mixing with small bit of wet food and smearing on her paw, crushing it and hiding it in a couple of tablespoons of tuna in her bowl and trying to contain her and open her mouth to put it in

Nothing has worked, she was atthe vets yesterday and diagnosed with an enlarged heart, so she needs this tablet every day for the rest of her life

She is about 13, indoors 99.9% of the time and does not like people, she tolerates me because I feed her but she hates me after yesterday's vet visit when she had to be sedated

Any suggestions?!

Mundo7976

Ah cats and tablets. Shoving it down her throat is an option but every day at that age!
You could try crushing and mixing with butter then onto the paw. Or crushing and mixing in water and syringe down the throat?

Alun

Some medication for cats is often not designed for them, and has a bitter taste that's difficult for them to stand. You can get things called pill pockets that are like soft cat treats that you hide the pill in.

Otherwise try crushing the pill really fine using a pill crusher (obtainable from any pharmacy) and mixing it in a really small amount of wet food when they're really hungry, eg first thing in the morning.

Is it Fortekor by any chance? Our cat is on this and doesn't seem to mind it.

Tranceypoo

Alun wrote:

Is it Fortekor by any chance? Our cat is on this and doesn't seem to mind it.

Yes it is! She's a very fussy eater....

Alun

Tranceypoo wrote: »

Yes it is! She's a very fussy eater....

All I can say is persevere!! Our cat is on Fortekor and Gabapentin, plus two supplements, Cystaid and Arthriaid and it took us a good while to figure out a way of getting it all into her.

Pilling her via her mouth is a highly dangerous undertaking, even the vet has problems, so we have to do it via her food.

Again, what we do is give her the Fortekor tablet, very finely ground up, in her first meal of the day. She doesn't have any food available overnight so in the morning she's really hungry. We give her a tiny amount of food, about a teaspoon, with the Fortekor tablet ground up and thoroughly mixed up. Usually she eats it right away, but sometimes walks off in disgust for no obvious reason. If we just leave her be and ignore all her plaintive cries (very difficult!) she eventually goes back and eats it, and when this happens we give her lots of praise. The other medications follow in similarly small amounts of food. Once she's finished all her meds, we feed her as normal. The key for our cat seems to be not to make too much fuss about it and to just ignore her if she's fussy. Any sign of pandering to her whims seems to be construed as a sign of weakness, and she'll keep on whining for something else without that nasty medicine in it. Don't give in !!!

Also as I said, make sure to get a pill crusher from your local pharmacy, it'll crush the tablet really fine. I think it's partly the texture they don't like if you don't grind it fine enough.

Loveinapril

The best advice I got from a vet was to crush the tablet and mix in it a bit of butter and put it on her nose. Instinct is then to lick it off or wipe it with her paw then lick that.

Tranceypoo

Loveinapril wrote:

The best advice I got from a vet was to crush the tablet and mix in it a bit of butter and put it on her nose. Instinct is then to lick it off or wipe it with her paw then lick that.

This seems to be the only thing that's working at the moment!

Archieboy13

Breaking it up and hiding it inside the jumbo dreamies worked for us , wolfed it down..

Tranceypoo

Thanks everyone, I'm sad to say that, even though I'd managed to get the tablets into her for the last four days, it was just too far gone and she died this afternoon. RIP Babs.

Odelay

Sorry to read that. You did everything you could, but sometimes it’s just out of your control and nature takes its course.

tedpan

I thought Galaxy tab or iPad when I read the title..

Anteayer

It might depend on the personality of the cat in question, but I used to just used to put a tiny bit of butter on the tablet and then place it midway down his tongue.

With my cat that would be fine, but I know with some others you'd probably end up in A&E.