Questions about cat meds - any vets about or people who buy meds online?

[shadowrose]

Hi, I would appreciate some advice from a vet or anyone who buys medicine online for their cat. I help my parents care for their cat because they are first time owners.

A year ago, my parents rehomed a senior cat from a neighbour. The neighbour wasn’t honest about the cat’s medical issues and my parents later found out the cat had hyperthyroism. She is on daily meds for this that cost around £30 per month from the vets.

Recently the cat started vomiting every day and the vet diagnosed acid reflux. She is now on Famotidine 20mg pills, a quarter morning and night.

My parents are paying over £70 now for the meds and they are finding it very difficult because they are pensioners.

The receptionist at the vets is not sympathetic to this. I have asked them about buying the meds online with a prescription but there is a negative atmisohere when I bring it up. They say the fee for the prescription is £30 and they won’t email it out. You must come once to request and sign for it and once again to collect it. As the vets is a 25 min drive away, this isn’t ideal and I feel they’re being obstructive.

I have a friend who is a vet and he says that Famotidine is a human drug. I could order it in the same strength, 20mg, from an online human pharmacy and quarter the pills myself, saving my parents a fortune. Apparently it’s no different. Can any vets confirm this because I don’t want to harm the cat.

My friend also said that the vet should be prescribing the larger bottle of the thyroid meds to last 3 months, because the cat has been taking it long term with no issues. I want to request this and buy it online but as I said above, getting this prescription is a different story!

Thanks for reading.

Sorry, that should read ‘negative atmosphere’. Phone typo!

My cat is on thyroid meds. I pay £18 for a prescription - timing it right gives me 3 x 3 month bottles. It's approx £45/50 a bottle I think. So about £18 a month. That's thyronorm. They will also email prescription out and I pay by cc over the phone. Can they change vets? Only risk then I guess is new vets may want to do their own tests as they take them on.

Thanks @Fluffycloudsfloatinginthesky , I think my parents’ cat is on Thyronorm too. I found it online and was considering sending out the sticker on the existing bottle as proof of prescription but I’m not sure they would accept this.

I’ve suggested changing vets but none of the local ones have any spaces unfortunately. I wanted my friend to take her on but he lives too far away, sadly.

I’m a dog person but all vet prescriptions would be the same.
some medication has stricter dispensing protocol so you do need to have the original prescription but most can be emailed to you.
also the charge is £30 but covers a six month period and then they will need to see your pet before they can dispense again.
I was paying £1.62 per tablet for Tralieve from the vet. I payed 40P per tablet from Animeds.
So despite having to pay for a vet check and prescription and having to drive 24miles to the vet every month to collect a prescription it was well worth it.

Hi OP, I'm a vet. I'll try to answer your queries:

Yes, asking for a written prescription is fine, and no vets I know would mind this. The charge at my practice is around £23, but maybe you are in a more expensive area of the country, e.g. London? The vet will need to re-examine the cat as often as deemed necessary to safely continue to prescribe the same dose. For a stable hyperthyroid cat, this would be every 3 months at my practice, but more often if unstable. We charge a fee per drug (e.g. for the famotidine and again for the Thyronorm), as it covers the time taken for the necessary checks etc for that drug.

The famotidine from a human pharmacy is indeed the same, but they will not dispense it without a written prescription for the animal. Do your parents find the famot helps? Was the gastritis disguised with endoscopy, or just a presumptive diagnosis? Does it prevent the vomiting?

I sort of get why the practice won't email the prescription, as I feel this system makes them easier to forge. But most online pharmacies accept the prescription as an email/screenshot, rather than insisting on the original being sent, so for this reason I do email them to clients 🤷🏻‍♀️

And I am happy for clients to ring and request a prescription over the phone, unless their pet is due a check-up before I can safely prescribe. I would be happy to prescribe a 100ml Thyronorm to most stable hyperthyroid cats of average size (not tiny!)

Hope this helps!

(An online pharmacy will definitely not accept a Thyronorm label in place of a written prescription).

Thanks for your reply @Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Yes the famotidine has helped a lot because the cat was vomiting almost every day and now she hardly ever does. The vet made a presumptive diagnosis as a first try before a full blood test.

My parents say the cat has check ups every 6 months so I don’t understand why they are on monthly prescriptions for 30ml a time when everything is fine. The cat is a regular weight, about 4 kg.

I found an online pharmacy that doesn’t need a prescription, you just answer some questions about symptoms and they send it out. It’s a human pharmacy - I can’t find any online animal pharmacies that sell famotidine.

Vet nurse here , no registered online pharmacy can legally supply a POM (prescription only medicine) product without a written prescription.
I would be very wary of anyone doing so.

If the vet is happy to only re-examine the cat every 6 months, then I don't understand why they won't write a prescription to cover 6 months of treatment. Maybe consider changing vets, as a PP said? The current vet is obliged to send their clinical records to the new practice, so although the new practice will want to examine the cat, I doubt they'll need to repeat blood tests etc if done recently anyway.

Be extremely wary of buying famotidine online without a prescription. In the UK, it is a prescription-only drug (for humans as well as animals), so this sounds dodgy and I would wonder exactly what would be in the tablets.

The vet is obliged to give you a written prescription for any medicine they would dispense themselves. We charge £15 per item and this has as many repeats as we normally give - so our policy would be to see a hyperthyroid cat every 3-6 months depending how stable and we’d allow enough medication to last that long (so typically a 100ml bottle with one repeat if the cat had been seen recently). The pharmacy should only accept an original prescription (we have BVA stickers to reduce fraud) or we will email direct to a pharmacy. This prevents owners emailing a prescription here there and everywhere to obtain large quantities of meds.

I pay a fiver for the prescription and then order hyperthyroid meds online

Wow a fiver @Brocollimatilda where in the country are you?

The online pharmacy seems ok. It has good reviews on Trustpilot and you have to fill out a form that is reviewed by a doctor before they approve it. I have done similar on Superdrug online when I was unwell and got prescription medicine without seeing a doctor.

It's still very dodgy ground if you are lying to get a prescription medication.

I'm getting on a bit now and have had pets all my life.

My current cat (purring next to me) is about 12, and recently I've begun to wonder for the first time in my life whether I'll be able to afford to have another pet when the sad day comes round for the current catster. The cost of looking after them properly is becoming prohibitive.

My cat is also on thyronorm, I pay £15 for the vet’s prescription (which will be a repeat prescription once we get her levels sorted out) then I find the cheapest place online.

I’d make a complaint to the vets, threaten with leaving and they may be more inclined to give a prescription. In the meantime get your parents to ask to be put on the waiting list of any other nearby vets. Can’t believe there are so many greedy vets out there, there are good ones but you just have to find them.

@Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr I understand but my parents are very anxious about paying for all these medications and they just want their much loved cat to stay healthy. I will do anything to help them. I don’t technically view it as lying because the cat does need it and it’s being used for a good purpose. If the vet fees weren’t so steep I wouldn’t have considered doing this.

Another vet here, we see out stable patients every 6 months and charge £25 for a written prescription. As we have had a significant number of our prescriptions used fraduently we get the client to gives us their order number and we send the prescription direct to the pharmacy.
We would do the thyronorm direct to the veterinary pharmacy and the famotidine to one of the human pharmacies who will dispense a veterinary prescription ( most will do).
I even help some of my older clients to order from the pharmacy.

The cost of the prescription covers my time in creating it and my staffs time in sending it to the online pharmacy.

Thanks for all your replies so far.

If I asked the vet for the prescription, would they put both medicines on the same prescription for a single fee? Or do they charge per item?

Our computer system will only put one medication of each prescription and with the two meds required you probably need them on different prescriptions to take to different pharmacies.
Whether they charge per piece of paper or just once for the vets time is at the individual practices discretion and policy.