The Diagnosis Is In...

I posted a while back about my cat Sadie's breathing problem. I took her to the emergency vet, and it appears she has chylothorax. The vet said to give her high doses of Rutin every day (2000-2500 mg), but since the pills are so big, how am I to give them to her? They're too big to shove down her throat. I tried dissolving them in water and using a syringe to get her to swallow them, but she spits it out. My cat is huge, and it's very hard for me to hold on to her long enough to make sure she swallowed it, let alone holding her down to get the solution in her mouth. I've tried putting them in food, but she hates soft food. I also tried crushing up the pill and rubbing the powder and some vaseline into her fur, but she won't lick it up. I am at the end of my rope. If she doesn't take these pills, there is nothing I can do for her. The disease is fatal, and I've heard this pill has done miracles with other cats in this condition. How am I going to get her to take them? Someone please help. I don't want to see my Sadie die.

Is there a way for you to break the pills down to 1/2 or 1/4 there size so that you can pill her? Of course if you break the pill to smaller sections to pillher this means instead of pilling her once it might be 2-4 times stretched like over an hour to get her a calm persiod before doing the next one. Its worth a shot anyways.

Also if you can breal them down there are things called pill pockets that you can put the pills into and maybe she will eat them.

I'm sorry to hear that Sadie is ill. That sounds like a very big pill.

I'm unfamiliar with that medicine. Is it a powder filled capsule or a solid tablet? Did the vet offer any advice on how to administer it? Is there an injectable form? From some quick googling it sounds like it might taste like citrus...it's no wonder she doesn't like it.

I have had to give Beandip 500mg supplements, and they were too big for him to swallow...and he's too sly for "adulterated" food.

What I did was empty the powder into empty #4 gelatin capsules. How many capsules it takes depends on the density of the medicine. But 2000mg of anything will be a lot, regardless. For Beandip's medicine, it took about 2.5 gel caps to get the job done. I had to pack the capsules pretty tight to get it in 2.5 of them. I use the butt end of another capsule to pack the powder in there. An optimistic minimum would be about 8 capsules for Sadie's medicine, but it could be quite a few more...it would just depend on how much would fit in a capsule.

I would ask the vet about injections. I would also check with a compounding pharmacy. They probably can't compound THAT much powder into reasonable sized liquid dosages...but they may be able to make the smaller capsules for you. I think it would be worth it.

I hope you can find a good solution for this.

Well, I took Sadie to see a specialist, and she seems to be doing slightly better. There wasn't that much fluid in her lungs 48 hours after her last tap, and the vet gave her a 50/50 chance to make a full recovery. I have her on Rutin, and that seems to have helped. He told me to continue her on that at 300 mg a day, although I've heard from other people the dosage should be more than that...what do you all think? She's also on antibiotics. I'm glad things aren't hopeless.

I don't know, I'm not familiar with that condition at all. I'm glad the outlook is slightly more optimistic now.

From the reading I did the other day, one article mentioned 250mg 3x a day. I think it said that made a great improvement in 3 weeks time, then the dosage was lowered? Let me see if I can find that.

It's here http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/art...?artid=1180424

If the specialist said 300mg/day I would do that, or get another opinion.

I hope Sadie continues to show improvement.