Please help:cat needs to take her meds

[Uberella]

My cat had a nasty fall from height 8 days ago;she has been quite seriously ill from complications from this and has arrived home tonight after her second three day stay in that time at our veterinary hospital.

she has to take 4 tablets twice a day;they are high dose steroids and a anti biotic;the steroids are extremely important as she developed a huge mass of inflammation in her stomach from physical trauma from the fall.

The vets told us they put the tablets in her kibble and she ate them while there but she’s refusing to eat for us;her evening kibble with the medication in remains untouched,we’ve mashed up some corned beef and crumbled the tablets in to tempt her and prior to this we managed to get one steroid into her by wrapping her in a towel but she was screeching and then pooped herself and it was too distressing for her and tbh seeing so distressed made me cry too.

I’m absolutely desperate to get the meds into her as she’ll decline without them and I can’t afford another vet stay;her treatments have nearly maxed out the limit of the insurance claim (£4600)-the limit is £5000

Please if anyone has any advice to get her meds into her then im willing to try it.

from a very worried cat owner

I used mackeral in tomato to get supplements into my cat.

So sorry about your DCat 😢

I feel your pain, Op. In the past I have had to wrap my boy in a towel. Hold him down on the kitchen table, open his mouth and force the tablets in. It's bloody awful for both of us. I see you have done similar. And he eventually got wise to it as well and pretended to swallow but spat the tablets out seconds later.

We've had a little success by crushing the tablets and putting them in his lick e lix.

Good luck.

So sorry to hear about your cat. I use a pill popper from amazon for my cat's meds but it takes a bit of a knack to use. Have you tried grinding it into a powder and putting it in a lick e lix? Or using pill putty (also amazon).

Pill Pockets are brilliant and have always worked with my girl but they are expensive (although worth every penny as far as I'm concerned)
https://amzn.eu/d/003zXUh3
Alternatively she'll sometimes eat a pill without noticing if it's tucked inside a chunk of a cat treat stick.
Good luck and I hope that she gets well soon.

might not be possible with the steroids but the vet should be able to give an antibiotic injection that lasts at least a week. My cat wouldn’t take tablets & they used to do this , more expensive but worth it if you can afford it.
Speak to the vet.

No use for tonight but can you get liquid medication instead of pills? Our boy needed antibiotics and painkillers after having two big canine teeth out over summer, and it was a breeze with a syringe - whereas getting his worming tablet into him is a different matter. I tend to coat that in butter and kind of hold him like a baby, rubbing his throat until he swallows, otherwise he keeps spitting it out. We also moved onto a three-month one to minimise trauma.

Crushed pills in Lick e lix, a bit of cheese, or some butter have worked for me in the past. He might refuse at first but give it some time. If desperate, I had a few times where I had to smear the laced Lick e lix into and around my cat's mouth with my finger and he'd lick it off. Talk to your vet though as they may be able to give long lasting steroid injections (we've also had this in the past).

My cat takes steroids. I tried grinding them to powder and mixing them with lickylix treats (which he loves) and he still wouldn't have them. I tasted the powder and I don't blame him, they taste grim.

What DID work was putting them inside a blob of Easypill and putting the blob in with his food.. It's like a very tasty putty. Down they go and he never tastes it because it's surrounded by this putty stuff It's on Amazon, or some vets sell it, or maybe you can get it in pet stores? It's called Easypill for Cats

It works a treat on our cat. Must admit I tried it on a previous cat and she wouldn't have it (but she was a bit of a picky oddball who wouldn't eat chicken either). But there are a lot of good reviews for it on Amazon, so hopefully it works for most.

I have found over many years, and many cats, that trying to pill them when they are on their back causes a lot of resistance (!), so having them on their front in a sphinx position is much easier and seems to make them less panicky.
However, I have never heard of the pill pockets or the tasty putty mentioned here, and will definitely look out for some of them next time I have to administer some pills!

https://ebay.io/m/7GWU42

this ( specific one picked randomly from eBay) has worked for me where pill pockets etc failed

If all else fails, and we had a cat where all else failed, you could try grinding the tablet down, mixing it with cheese spread (like Primula) and smearing on her front paw. She will lick it off to groom herself.

Thank you;ordered;they’ll arrive tomorrow;obviously not in time for tonight’s or the mornings doses but if it means we’ll get tomorrow PM’s doses down her then so be it;she adores her crunchy treats

Similar: crush the tablets in butter and smear it on the top of her paws. They can't bear it and will lick it off. Lik-e-lix might be an alternative.

Thank you everyone who’s replied so far;I’ve ordered pill pockets from Amazon which will arrive tomorrow,I didn’t know they existed.

Unfortunately the Lix sachets won’t work with her;my two male cats love these but her royal highness refuses point blank to entertain them.

We found the pill pocket things worked (esp the royal canin ones which were hard to get hold of at times - the vet often had some though). However DCat has a food allergy and now can’t have them. We’ve found one person holding her on her back, plus another physically opening her mouth at the sides and dropping a steroid pill into the back of her throat, is the only reliable way. She has now got used to it (she gets a treat afterwards) but you have to learn the knack and do it quickly before they start to resist. Wrapping like a burrito might be a good idea too, but the key is just firmly pushing at both sides of the mouth to open it, and dropping in the pill as quick as possible. Bit of a knack but it’s learnable. (Pill pockets less stressful if she’ll take them!)

I used the following method to get worming tablets in mine. It takes a bit of prep...

Take a handful of Dreamies and crush them into a fine powder (I used the end of a rolling pin).

Take the tablet and dab a layer of butter/marg all over it. Not super thick but a decent coating.

Roll the now sticky/greasy tablet in the Dreamies crumbs like you're making truffles. Make sure its totally coated in Dreamie powder.

Find cat, feed a few normal Dreamies to build up confidence and reduce suspicion. Then bring in the crumb coated one quickly followed by a couple more normal ones.

Call the vet tomorrow and ask if they can give long acting steroids / antibiotic injections and take her back every time she needs them . Hope she gets well soon .

Have you tried the shrimp/prawn flavoured Primula cheese? Don't know who buys this for humans but my old cat used to love it, she had to take a daily pill for the last few years of her life

Good luck @Uberella Please let us know how you get on. Fingers crossed for Her Royal Highness.

You can definitely get injectable steroids.

Tobias needs them for his IBD and is literally un-pillable - he once even managed to escape being taken to the vets by wriggling out of 2 of us holding him at once! I have nick named him The Hagfish - look them up on Google if you don't know about them 😱

So every 6 weeks we toddle off to the vets (in itself a mission), and he gets his steroid injections.

We have had same issues and found that if you administer the pill with a little bit of water via a small syringe at the side of the mouth this causes the cat to swallow the water along with the pill. (Cat still wrapped safely in a towel etc to do this).

Please see attached.....

Never heard of these! Have ordered some to keep "just in case". Thank you @TamzinGrey.

I used to wrap each pill in a prawn - she loved prawns so much that she generally didn’t notice the pill hidden inside. Good luck!

Oh OP what a stressful experience for everybody, no further advice, just solidarity, we’ve been trying to get one single worming tablet into our darling girl for about 10 days 😫