How the heck do you give you cat a pill?

I had a friend claim that once someone else was sitting on the floor holding the cat, he would use a straw like a dart blowgun, and shoot it right into the cats mouth.

Lol

Put in lap

Put two fingers on each end of jaw where they kinda hold their mouth slightly agape.

YEET

Method I use because my cats are really tolerant:

Open mouth gently and give treat
Repeat couple of times
Feed pill with a treat
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Depends on your cat. My cat, I kind of cradle the back of her head, behind her ears in one hand, (think scruffing but not scruffing bc that’s not nice). With my dominant hand (the hand to the front of her, I come at her from the side), I lift her chin, open her mouth with a finger, and with my index finger push the pill to the back of her tongue.

She’s had to take a lot of pills in her life so we have it down pat. But it’s mostly about being firm but not scaring them.

Press your index finger and thumb into the back end side of the cats mouth, this will open it, shove the pill towards the back of their mouth against her throat with the other hand and then let go. If it was far enough back they will swallow it.

I clamp the cat between me and a wall whilst petting and then gently open his mouth and after massage the pill down. If we do it elsewhere he will scratch and go mayhem, this way he stays still and calm

My cats will eat anything if it's served with Churu. That stuff is wild. Just a blob of Churu in my hand with the pill in it and the cat's so into licking the Churu they don't even realize they just took a pill.

The daily injections though, those weren't fun. Especially once he started feeling better and had energy to fight us.

I give my cats malt paste regularly. They lick it from my fingers and like it a lot. When they need pills from the vet I simply put them into the paste. They don't even really notice and there is no struggle at all.

Why don't they make cat (and dog) pills taste like a treat? It can't be that hard!

It’s not hard it’s more expensive. Heartworm and flea and tick meds come in treat form.
- cats also tend to be a lot more finicky about different foods :(
They make pill pocket soft treats for both cats and dogs, and depending on the medication, some places will just make a medicated soft treat.

My elder cat was having kidney problems, wouldn't take pills, would eat around the pill to eat the pill pocket treat, and would violently shake her head if you tried using liquid meds. Eventually, I found an online pet pharmacy that would just blend her kidney meds right into a soft chew treat... unfortunately, this was several years ago, and I can not remember the name of the site I used.

Depends in how much skin you want to keep.

There are aides for giving medication to cats. Dont know the name but it exists.

Like others said : towel roll

I like putting her back against my belly so she can not get away to fast. Than put pill in mouth by opening it a bit. Than keep her mouth shut a bit. To make her swallow you can pet her on the troath.

Some cats who like food a lot dont mind milled pill-dust on their diner.

There is a paste to put the pill in and it tastes better. You can buy it at the vet. Maybe in a drugstore/petstore to.

With middle finger and thumb, gently press them on opposite sides of cats mouth. They will tilt their head back and start licking to move u and in that moment fling the pill with your pointer finger in their mouth and gently hold their head back and up until they swallow it.

My cat doesn’t fuck with pill pockets or crushed up on their food and this way works great.

I just put it in his food but some cats aren't cool with that.

My cat will find the 2 piece of kibble that have been in the bowl 4 hours longer than the rest and set them aside for me

I grind it like, snorting fine, and sprinkle it wet food and stir, has always worked for me.

Remember to check with your veterinarian if it's okay to pulverize the pills, some medications are slow release and crushing them is probably bad
- Oh good to know thanks!

Pill pockets are the only way we can get our cat to take her pills. But we've had to put the pills into little gelatin capsules and wrap those in pills pockets because the pills are bitter. If my cat gets a taste of the bitter pills and the pill pocket, she'll never eat the pill pocket flavor again.

Towel roll.

If you want to try the stick a pill down their throat method, this site has a video showing you how

Edit: I usually try the pill wrapped in some cheese first, if he catches on to that then I have to use the above method

with my old cat i kinda put her between my legs and gently held her mouth open (though it was harder bc i had to wear gloves with the paladia); but if you look down on them because of the angle it's a lot easier. oh also i remember gently scritching and tickling the under of their chin to get them to open up a little and then dropping it on their tongue/down the throat and then rubbing their neck to get them to swallow. just be gentle obviously

you can also try compounding to either chewable or liquid (most vets will let you do this and pick it right up at a pharmacy), which helped out a lot. liquid is easier because you can just droplet a bunch onto their gums and let them lick it off and chewables are good because they'll just chew it up on their own, usually.

I've found that if you hold the cat in your lap, use the finger and thumb of one hand to wiggle on either side of their face where their mouth begins to open their mouth, if you can then get the pill on the very furthest part of their tongue closest to their throat, there is an automatic reflex to swallow. I used to try putting it in their food and it never worked. This worked every time.

I would use the Meow Mix Irresistibles soft treats and wrap it around the pill. With my last cat, she associated the pill bottle with treats over time and would just take the pill by itself as a treat!

Late in life, she was having a lot of health issues, and one of the pills she had to take was bitter and without a coating. It ended up ruining the Irresistibles treats for her and I couldn’t get her to take them for the life of me.

Just so ya know, if you go with crushing up the pill, check with your vet to make sure its not extended release or something. Sometimes the pill is meant to slowly dissolve over time and crushing it up frontloads the dose and can cause problems. The prescriber/your vet will know if its safe.

Good point! Thanks for letting me know

Pill pockets

Might I recommend the Inaba Churu pockets? We've been jamming pills into our girl's hell-scented maw for years but these have made such a huge difference. We insert one pill per pocket and she pounces on and gobbles them up. Now giving her pills is fun instead of leaving us with terrible smelling fingers served with a side of feline childhood trauma.
Plus Purina FortiFlora probiotic stuff. It's irresistible powder my vet recommended, and it works amazing if you shake the pill pocket in that stuff
I make pockets from meat.

Cut meat into bits of one cubic centimeter.

Cut pocket with scissors or knife. One incision makes a pocket.

Cut pill into ~10 fragments and insert into the pockets with tweezers. Squeeze the pocket open to avoid touching the outside of the meat bit with the bitter pill fragment.
This is the most effective for my cat, but just be sure they don't eat the treat around the pill and then spit the pill out.

There’s a technique to hold their jaw and put the tablet at the back of the tongue which I’ve had success with, but I hate doing it. Look it up before trying because my memory is fuzzy.

I’ve had great luck though with pulverizing the shit out of a pill (uncoated, prednisone) and mixing with wet food. Like to powder with the back of a spoon, not just chunks.

🤔 this seems like "How to transform your domesticated cat into a tiger 101"
- Yeah for the more ferocious fighters out there this would be extremely difficult to pull off but many house cats can be done this way.
  
  You place the pill on the top of your index finger, right hand. Then you take the thumb and index finger of your left hand, form a C shape pincer with them, and then oinch at their gumline on either side to force their jaw apart. You’ll have a moment when their mouth is open and you can see their tongue - you have to poke that pill as far back on their tongue as you can. They will gag and recoil and lick lick lick the air, but hopefully the pill has gone down in that process.
This is the way.

I do this every night with 2 pills. I just did it 3 minutes ago, in fact.

Lay cat in lap. Grab head and kinda hold/lightly pinch cheeks with left hand. With right hand force your fingers pinching the pill into the back of the throat. Push it as far back as quickly as you can with your pointer finger. Hold him to make sure it gets swallowed.

Apologize and give him a little scratch and kiss.
Basically it feels like you're trying to see the inside of a python's throat. Equally as dangerous.

Use your fingers to open their mouth/jaw. Place pill as far back as you can reach. Hold their mouth shut. Lift their head slightly and semi-aggressively stroke their neck which will force them to swallow. Double check they didn't houdini the pill at any point along the way.

There's something I call a "pill stick", into which you put it in the barrel, jam it into the cats mouth while holding their jaw and then push the trigger. Requires a little finesse but easier than other methods.

We have one of those and got pretty good at using it with our tabby. But when our tuxedo needed medicine, it did not go very well.

For him, fortunately, his medicine can be compounded into a paste that we rub inside his ear. He doesn't enjoy it, but he tolerates it. Definitely a stress saver for us.

That's the neat part: you don't.

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We used a two person system.

One held the cat close to their body, securing the front paws against the cat with one hand and securing the head with the other hand. You have to secure the back hips against you with your arm or elbow.

The other pushed the pill into the cat's mouth, held it shut and stroked the throat.

After a few months the cat realized struggling wasn't worth the effort and only tried to claw our faces off if we got complacent.

We miss her very much.

My cat has a fungal infection in his brain and requires one pill twice a day. Been doing this for sevenish years. He's the only cat I've ever had, so take this with a grain of salt, but I just get him on my chest and pet him until he starts purring. Then I use a finger to open his mouth and push the pill to the back of his throat, and immediately go back to petting him. He swallows it, and sometimes gags for a second. But, I do it really quickly, and usually it's over quick enough that he doesn't even stop purring. YMMV

I use a pill gun like this one then immediately follow up with a treat. He hates the pill but the sooner that's over with the sooner he gets the treat, and we have to do it again if he manages to spit the pill out. Treat doesn't come until the pill is swallowed.

Yeah this combined with tucking the cat in your armpit, works like a charm. They will hate it but it's effective!

Pill pockets can work, but some cats will eat around the pill.

Personally, I’ve had the most success using cheese slices. As in, the highly processed plastic wrapped “cheese”. Tear off a bit, wrap it around the pill and kinds of smoosh it around the pill, and just like that, it’s irresistible to kitties.

you can usually bury it in a chewy treat or pill pocket. with bigger pills I break it in half and use two chewy treats.

This is the way we give our cat his pill twice a day. The people down below talking about jamming it down a cats throat seem a little insane to me.

Last time we gave my gf's cat a deworming tablet it was a team effort. I held him down with his legs in my hands, her dad held his head still and his jaw open and her mum put the tablet in his mouth (it took her four or five tries because the dumb moggy loves to spit them out).

You can try to crush it in smaller fragments and embed it in wet food, but I don't think it's ever easy (except with animals that gulp down food in half a second maybe)

You might ask if they have the meds in a liquid solution. My cat's on some anti seizure meds, was very tricky about eating around even crushed up pill etc. The liquid solution cost marginally more (less than 5% difference I think) and is significantly easier to give and more importantly, be sure she ingested exactly as much as she should.

It depends on what the medication is. Mostly I just crush it up and mush it into a Churu or their food or something. If they need to be on an empty stomach, like if I need them to have some gabapentin before a vet visit but they need to be on an empty stomach, I'll dose their water.

Depending on the cat, you may need to look into a different medication, especially if it's one of the ones with weird flavors, like cherry Clavamox; I'll see if I can get an abx injection instead.

Worse comes to worse, you can try getting the medication compounded into a different form or a different flavor. The one thing I absolutely insist on getting compounded are appetite stimulants: the cat doesn't want to eat anyway, and me forcing something down his throat is going to make him more likely to try to avoid both me and the food. I get transdermal ciproheptadine (mirtazapine can make some of them agitated, and I'd rather be certain that any weirdness is their illness and not the treatment). You just gently rub some on their inner ear and an hour later they want to eat :)