Andy’s still on his medicine for the heart murmur/blood pressure issue discovered last Winter. Every morning he must submit to a mouthful of tuna-flavored medicine.
Some days, he walks by me and I just pick him up. Others, he hides under the bed in the guest bedroom, necessitating more strategy to catch him for his daily dose. Most days, though, I just out-wait him. He forgets what’s coming, lets him guard down, and he’s easily caught.
Today was an “under the bed” day, though he made a tactical error that allowed easy capture: the front half of his body was under the bed, but the tail end half stuck out in the open. I just reached down and snagged him up!
Not nice, I know, but I laughed when I saw his magnificent tail sticking straight out from the below the duvet! “Here I am…come get me!”
“I won’t take my medicine! NO! NO! NO!” Andy hides to avoid his medicine.
Once I’ve squirted the medicine in his mouth, I rub his nose and head, calmly tell him he’s a good kitty, and, when he starts to wiggle around to try to get down, I let him down.
I started giving him a treat after this ordeal a few weeks ago to celebrate successful dosing. He now associates the icky medicine with the reward, though he still tries to avoid me and the medicine the next time I try to catch him for his daily dose!
I don’t know about your neck of the woods, but here in Canada, a lot of the medications we get come in eye drop form. Its great! No pills! The prying there eyes open takes a bit of practice but once you get hang of it, I find it way less traumatic than shoving pills down their throat. 😉
I’ve linmited experience with cat medicines – eye drop for eye infection, this liquid I give Andy for his heart/blood pressure, and a probiotic tablet that I had to crush with a mortar and pestle to get into a form I almost could get him to eat mixed in regular cat food. (His brother ate more of the probiotic than Andy did, of course, since Andy needed it more! Their veterinarian said it was OK for them both to have it, of course). Oh, and cat vitamins when they were sick kittens with diarrhea. That one was impossible to administer. The bottle came with a dropper, and the instruction was to give the kitten “1/5 drop”. Looking at that, maybe it was 1 to 5 drops…. Too late: they didn’t get them because I thought it was 1/5th drop, impossible to gauge!
LOL. 1/5th of a drop!!! For colds and any respiratory illness you can get eye drops for them. It’s called Maxitrol. It is also an anti inflammatory and antibiotic. This is especially great now that the big boys are going outside and coming in with cuts and scrapes. I keep 1/2 a dozen bottles around the house. (for obvious reasons) 😉
I’ll have to check that out with my veterinarian!
Ah the joys of being a doctor. An epidemic of a cold has run through the cats. I have to start administering eye drops to each of them daily for 10 days. The joy! 😉
What a nightmare! That’s, what, six fuzzy guys you have? I thought it was bad enough when I had to give eye drops three times a day for five days to Dougy a couple of times, but…
[…at this point Mr. Thomas had to sit down to catch his breath and top thank Ye Gods it was poor http://tvkapherr.wordpress.com/ who got to administer all those drops to all those cats….]
🙁 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
🙁
I just went back to http://tvkapherr.wordpress.com/ ‘s blog to verify the cat count. The poor man actually has 18 cats (and one Jack Russell terrier!). I knew it was several. I’ll keep that in mind the next time I feel like whining about taking care of two!
Thank you for your sympathy. :-D. I’m just happy its drops. The pills would kill me. But I won’t take all the credit, my daughter is a great help. She runs and grabs them for me, so we can bang it off pretty quickly.
When I got Andy’s medicine, I had a choice of pills or liquid flavored in tuna, chicken, or some other cat-friendly flavors. That was a no-brainer!
I can’t imagine getting pills down my cats, and tricks like crushing them and mixing them with food hasn’t worked well in past. You know how cats can be about food! Ether it wasn’t a flavor they liked, a style they liked – with or without “gravy” – or some other obscure thing I couldn’t discern, but I couldn’t predict how much medicine they got.
The liquid assures a proper dose since I was provided a syringe marked in increments to do the deed.
Giving my cats medicine was always a trial. I’ve learned so much from your experience — establishing a routine, the cat burrito, the treat afterward. My future cats and I thank you for the trouble you will undoubtedly save us. Thanks, Doug!
You are welcome, NebraskAnn! I’m learning a lot from your blog, too. The World-Herald used to be my main resource for information on the candidates or the shenanigans of those who purportedly represent our interests in government, but they decided this end of the state wasn’t worth their trouble (not economical to service the 10,000 or so of us out here).
I said to hell with them, didn’t continue on line since they found an eighth of a billion dollars to make their fancy new headquarters, paid in part through my loyal readership, which went back more than 50- years to my pre-reading years when I just looked at the comic pages! (I miss it, but am more stubborn than smart, Ann!)
That rant aside, I learned the hard way to deal with cats needing medication, and am glad I’ve contributed to your knowledge of a good way to do it! I think the big secret is the swaddling, because they calm down really fast once trussed up!
Doug
Just call me Ann. 🙂
Ann – Will do, though I really like the fused Nebraska + Ann, one of the top user names I’ve encountered!
Love that photo of Andy and those yellow eyes glaring back at you and the camera.
Takes two to hold down Ali when she needs medicine which isn”t often thank goodness.
You and the boy shave a great week end.
Thanks, Ruth! You, too.
Yeah, I lucked out on that photo because I just wanted a generic Andy photo for this blog – whatever I could get, considering he was still trying to hide from me!
When he ran under the table, I knew I’d be lucky to get anything, so just held the camera low enough to (I hoped) pick up something there. The flash furnished the impact by highlighting his eyes in an interesting way.
So sweet, smart to include a reward with the meds. My Angel Bobo also had heart issues and I soo remember having to give him meds!
I’m fortunate Andy and Dougy are both mellow cats in most circumstances. (Neither was too calm when I had to give them baths, but that was the exception.)