Giving meds

Well, the vet visit for worms went well. All he has is tapeworms, fecal sample was neg. The bald spots he has are apparently a reaction to Frontline. And he doesn't have any foot problems, his aversion to jumping is just because he still remembers the pain from after the declawing and because he is a 13 lb cat. The vet says one of his big boys is the same way, and he has his claws. Also found out that Puppy has a little acne problem!

Anyway, the question. How are we supposed to give pills to him? The vet who gave us sedatives for the plane had this elaborate thing where we hold his mouth open and drop them down. He DOES NOT like this. We tried it last night with the worm medication, and he was not happy.

So I gave up with that. I took a spoon, put some food on it, and placed the pill in the middle. Yum yum, he ate it right up, and he even did it a second time.

This was a lot easier. So why did the first vet have this elaborate scheme for getting him to swallow without any food? How are pills supposed to be administered?

If your cat will take pills in food then you are very lucky!! I have to put pills in something called a pill pocket and basically ram it down their throats. You never know if you cat will take a pill easily or not so vets just do it that way to make sure the cat gets the pill. They don't have time to fuss around finding out if the cat will just eat it. Good luck with the rest of the pills!

you're SO lucky Puppy would take the pill with food.

my two new kitties would NOT take it in food, and i cannot pill a cat. so i took them both to the vet and had him do it for me (for a small fee, of course! ) and it took the vet 15 minutes to pill both of them, using a piller (the syringe type thing). imagine if i'd tried it?

Wow, I had no idea it was this hard! I was suspecting he would just eat around it, especially when he started licking his food rather than biting. But when he uncovered the pill, he just took it in his mouth and swallowed.

I'm not sure if he's dumb for not licking around it or smart for figuring out that if he just ate it, we'd stop holding him down and prying his mouth open!