I recommend everyone who has healthy cats to talk to their vet about administering empty capsules. Just so you and the cat get comfortable with the process before you need it.
Kind of like you need to train them from an early age that clipping their nails is fine.
When your cat gets old, they will need to take oral supplements, at the very least. You’re the person they trust the most to give them.
> You’re the person they trust the most
-_- Gave my spry lil five year old critter a hug. He doesn't deserve to get old.
So the only way I can give it to him (without drama) is by putting it deep into his mouth so he never tastes it and immediately swallows it.
From a quick search, it looks like cerenia is available in this form.
Your last sentence, "[pilling cat] (without drama) is by putting it deep into his mouth" must mean you have a very chill cat [emphasis mine].
I bought it off of Chewy, but there are other places that compound it into a transdermal as well.
> Your last sentence, "[pilling cat] (without drama) is by putting it deep into his mouth" must mean you have a very chill cat [emphasis mine].
I'm not the person you are replying to, but for my cat putting any pills deep into her mouth meant using a piller device. Luckily my cat was totally non-aggressive, so when it came time to take pills she would try to evade, but never attack, but she was pretty good at undulating her tongue to try to swat pills out.
Over her last year or so she was getting multiple medications per day (and subcutaneous fluids 3x a week) so being able to do some of them as transdermals helped lessen the stress of getting everything into her.
> Can confirm, transdermal maropitant (cerenia) worked very well for my cat who was dealing with both CKD and IBD in her later years (she passed away in December).
Thank you both for the tip! I'm going to look in to that.
Sorry to hear your cat passed away :(
> Luckily my cat was totally non-aggressive, so when it came time to take pills she would try to evade, but never attack, but she was pretty good at undulating her tongue to try to swat pills out.
Exact same thing here. The cat is totally relaxed, no biting, clawing, etc. Only tries to "go in reverse". Which doesn't help him, since I'm sitting behind him. But he has gotten good at trying to swat pills out of his mouth with his tongue. But with a piller, it is do-able.
Thanks.
She made it to ~18 (just over 16 years with me and she was estimated to be about 2 by the shelter I adopted her from, but they weren't exactly sure) despite the various health issues, so it wasn't a big shock when she passed away but its still awful to lose them. Be good to your guy while you still can.
The one other thing that helped with my cat for some medications is, where possible, stuffing the pill into a gel cap (you can buy bags of like hundreds of caps pretty inexpensively) that's just big enough to fit the pill. This increases the size a bit, of course, but for any particularly bitter medication it at least masks the mouth taste.
They even have some vet-specific gel caps made to taste like chicken, etc. Those never worked any better than non-flavored ones for my cat, though anecdotally I guess they do work for some cats enough that they will voluntarily eat the pill.
Although, it needs to be balanced against other options. I’m sure this list isn’t exhaustive but we have:
* Medicine
* Uncontrolled spread
* Somehow modify the animals’ behavior to spread illnesses less
* Wipe out infected animals
2 and 4 seem less than desirable. 3… I mean “herding cats” is an expression for a reason, right? They are not very obedient in general.
Is there a good option I missed?
We ought to have learned after the Covid “herd immunity” policies that killed hundreds of thousands around the world, that infectious disease control should be grounded on actual research, and not on simplified world models.
Researchers currently recommend treatment.
My point is, take this uninformed opinion that goes against the researchers’ recommendation for what it is: wrong.
By whom?
> mass use of antibiotics in industrial farming
This is a completely different issue. No one's doing mass prophylactic treatment against this fungus, and even if we treated every single cat in the world, there are 60 times more chickens. Industrial farming is on a completely different scale.
> doctors and vets
Unless they're citing research supporting their opinion, it's as irrelevant as any other non-specialist.
Depends on the coating - some coatings only dissolve once they are out of the strongly acidic stomach. Slow dissolution is used in retarded medication, which may or may not be coincident with targeting post-stomach delivery.
Flavored pill compounding is apparently also an option, but I've never tried it.
This does not work on compounds sensitive to stomach acids. Some medications (both veterinarian and human) have to be specially coated to survive this environment [1], if you crush the pills the medication gets less effective, completely ineffective or, like ibuprofen, irritate the stomach. Or, worst case, the medication is designed for retarded release in the stomach acid - and now that you've crushed it, the entirety of the compound is dissolved in the stomach at once.
Please always ask your veterinarian/physician, the pharmacy staff and always read the medication's application notes because particularly physicians often are unaware and the same ingredient on the prescription might be fulfilled by a crushable or a non-crushable variant which only the pharmacist knows.
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magensaftresistente_Tablette
Your conclusion is based on your misunderstanding: perhaps take more care in future, and be especially careful if sharing your misinformation.
After absorption into the bloodstream, ibuprofen indirectly reduces the prostaglandins that normally protect the stomach lining
crushing ibuprofen can make local irritation more intense and quicker, but this is usually not the main driver of ulcers
Taking too much vitamin C [acidic] can cause side effects, including: Upset stomach, vomiting and loose stools. Heartburn. Stomach cramps or bloating.
I mean what you've said is interesting (albeit irrelevant to ibuprofen given the pathway).
PROTIP never ever do this. The cat might just decide food is not worth having and develop liver and stomach issues. Bastards won't tell you anything is wrong, then they'll just crawl into a hole, as usual.
Source: I had the same not-good, very very bad idea and almost killed mine once. Had to go for a feeding tube and all. If you must give you cat medicine in pill form, just use one of those silicone pill "siringes" with flexible tips (and give it some Churu or similar to train it to tolerate medicine better). Washable, no fuss, quick and easy.
My wife's family's countryside ex-farm has a barn, and out in the barn we found... a mummified cat. By mummified I mean, desiccated, hairless, but much more than a mere skeleton.
Damnedest thing.
In my experience, the best way to give cats pills is a pill pocket, e.g. from Greenies [1]. The pocket is a hollow, soft cat treat. You put the pill inside the pocket, close it, and feed it to the cat. With some larger pills, you may have to split them up (if the medication allows). Some cats don't love the flavor, but you can use a sauce packet and coat it with some sauce.
Do yourself a favor, crush the pill and put it in food. Problem solved. Difficult with multiple cats but I had two and one needed medication so I put this little guys on a window sill he loved to perch on which the other cat didn't care to reach.