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Cats and pills
Jul. 26th, 2013 08:06 amThanks everyone for the advice on getting a pill into a cat.
I bought a bag of tuna pill poppers last night as that sounded the most pleasant for the cat. I tried a dry run to see what she thought of them without the pill and she won't touch them. Then again, she's barely touching any food and hardly drinking any water, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised by that. Undaunted, I tried again this morning before the pill and she still didn't want anything to do with it. *sigh* Back to the other methods.
I'm not really so concerned about wrapping her up. Her back hurts her and her back legs are basically incapacitated, so there's no struggling from the shoulders back, but man, the head and shoulders still have a lot of fight in them. She clamps her jaws tight and growls at me and there's fire in her eyes. This is her first line of defense because it puts me at an emotional disadvantage. It's really hard to do this while I'm crying (like I'm doing now thinking about it). Squeezing her jaws does not force her mouth open. I have discovered that if I slowly force my little finger in from the front, through the deadly teeth, she will open her mouth enough for me to put pill in all the way and hold the tongue down long enough to get my fingers out without her spitting the pill out.
She is however determined and devious. I did that and stroked under her chin as directed to induce swallowing. This went on for over a minute before she actually swallowed. I took my hands away to see if I'd been duped. Everything looked good. She resumed normal breathing and stared hate at me. :-( I waited a little more before putting her back in the pen. She got on the floor, did this maneuver with her mouth and spit out the pill that appeared to have been gone. Shit. *sigh*
I got in the pen with her, apologized profusely to the back that was all she was letting me see and we went at it again. This time though I decided to try something a little different. After holding that pill in her mouth for a couple of minutes she had to be thirsty. So since we were on the floor near her water bowl, I forced the pill in again only this time put some water on the end of her mouth with my finger. She put out her tongue a little to get the water and swallowed it, along with the pill. Then she drank quite a bit of water on her own. Victory.
On a side note, I think everything is piling up a bit much. My neck was feeling pretty badly out yesterday and I had a migraine start on the way home. I was in bed by 8:00 last night and I'm feeling a little fuzzy brained this morning. The other day Alysha said to me, "You need to learn to run faster or set traps". I asked why and she said, "Because you can't seem to catch a break". Anyone know where they sell break traps?
I bought a bag of tuna pill poppers last night as that sounded the most pleasant for the cat. I tried a dry run to see what she thought of them without the pill and she won't touch them. Then again, she's barely touching any food and hardly drinking any water, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised by that. Undaunted, I tried again this morning before the pill and she still didn't want anything to do with it. *sigh* Back to the other methods.
I'm not really so concerned about wrapping her up. Her back hurts her and her back legs are basically incapacitated, so there's no struggling from the shoulders back, but man, the head and shoulders still have a lot of fight in them. She clamps her jaws tight and growls at me and there's fire in her eyes. This is her first line of defense because it puts me at an emotional disadvantage. It's really hard to do this while I'm crying (like I'm doing now thinking about it). Squeezing her jaws does not force her mouth open. I have discovered that if I slowly force my little finger in from the front, through the deadly teeth, she will open her mouth enough for me to put pill in all the way and hold the tongue down long enough to get my fingers out without her spitting the pill out.
She is however determined and devious. I did that and stroked under her chin as directed to induce swallowing. This went on for over a minute before she actually swallowed. I took my hands away to see if I'd been duped. Everything looked good. She resumed normal breathing and stared hate at me. :-( I waited a little more before putting her back in the pen. She got on the floor, did this maneuver with her mouth and spit out the pill that appeared to have been gone. Shit. *sigh*
I got in the pen with her, apologized profusely to the back that was all she was letting me see and we went at it again. This time though I decided to try something a little different. After holding that pill in her mouth for a couple of minutes she had to be thirsty. So since we were on the floor near her water bowl, I forced the pill in again only this time put some water on the end of her mouth with my finger. She put out her tongue a little to get the water and swallowed it, along with the pill. Then she drank quite a bit of water on her own. Victory.
On a side note, I think everything is piling up a bit much. My neck was feeling pretty badly out yesterday and I had a migraine start on the way home. I was in bed by 8:00 last night and I'm feeling a little fuzzy brained this morning. The other day Alysha said to me, "You need to learn to run faster or set traps". I asked why and she said, "Because you can't seem to catch a break". Anyone know where they sell break traps?
