Congestive Heart Failure - 9 yr old...  

Our 9 year old male "Elmo" was diagnosed with heart mumur last year, and congestive heart failure this year. He spent 3 nights at Cardiologist (thank heavens for 24PetWatch insurance) and is back with us but on plenty of medication TWICE a day.
He is difficult to give medicine to, putting it in his food no longer works he just won't eat. My wife has success with putting the medicine in cat lax, and physically putting her finger to the back of this throat. I have some success with clear capsules or a pill popper.
This issue is, it seems his personality has changed tremendously. The medicine leaves him in a confused, unhappy state most of the time. He shows little interest in things he found fun before.
We faced early on that the medicine was going to be a task - what we didn't expect were the changes that include going to touch him and he recoils - thinking more medicine is on the way.
With chf, if meds stop then edema filling the lungs is the result - so not an acute heart attack - but a difficult, painful existence before death.
We have decided to ride this out for several months and see if anything changes - maybe get more used to meds (he has been on them 1 month) or come back a bit to his old habits.
The cardiologist was the one who brought up the discussion of, "at some point you have to face the situation of what quality of life it is for both of you to have this going on..." that hit like a ton of bricks...
Any thoughts would be helpful...

Many thanks, the Pill Popper is what I have some success with, but what I learned from the video is to enter the cat mouth from the side - this is something the cardiologist showed me to do with a clear capsule, she said, "right in the area where there's no teeth"... I tried it with clear capsule later that night and it didn't fly...
The cat bag would certainly be worth a try...
Thanks for all of your kind comments...

The video helped... I now have good luck with putting all of the pills in a clear capsule, using the pill popper and going in from the side of the mouth like the video posted shows. I am guessing that the disolvable capsule takes away any bitter taste of the medication. I do it when he is drowsey and it is working better.
He did pretty good for five days, and then he seemed lethargic and disinterested again...
Thanks for help and comments...

Elmo died on Monday, December 5, 2011, exactly 10 years to the day he came to live with us.

He did pretty well for many months, then slowly he would have a good day, then a bad day, back and forth. We took him back to the Vet 2 months ago, and basically found out what we expected... this was the beginning of the end. (The medications got fairly easy to administer with the clear capsules holding medicine and using the pill popper...) The Vet then said, "60-90 days...".

Last week, he had a fantastic week. Perked up and was acting so well I thought the prognosis was wrong. But Sunday brought a quick downhill fall. Additional heart medication given did nothing to help - which is also a symptom that the heart disease is winning and the medicine is losing. Sunday night he was in bad shape, by Monday morning we knew we were probably facing his last hours. He couldn't/wouldn't eat... met all three of the "make a list of the 3 favorite things the terminal cat likes to do... and when they don't want to do those anymore it is time to consider bringing him in" list.

We gave him some more heart medication and even pain medication and it didn't help. He continued to take on fluid and breathing was horrible.

We were able to spend 2 hours with him prior to his appointment, petting him and talking to him. At one point, he raised his head and turned and looked directly at me for about 20 seconds... he had been so unresponsive - other then a little tail twitch - I thought maybe he was acknowleding our love for him.

For a childless couple whose life revolved around these two cats - it is terribly tough.

 

This morning, our 13 year old cat woke us with her 2 or 3 time a year "nightmare meow", some kinda wild meow we never hear any other time, and she seems to be asleep or close to it when we check her. I had a hard time getting to sleep after that. When I finally did, I had a dream late in the morning, I dreamed I opened the back door of the house, and Elmo ran in (he was an indoor cat) and jumped up into my arms. Not the last forms I saw of Elmo of the weight loss he experienced, or the fluid he took on in the end that made him look pudgy, but good 'ol healthy Elmo from the time prior to his illness...

 

Thanks to everyone here for suggestions and concern...