Saturday, August 28, 2010

Pilling The Cat - A Saga for Some

This is our arsenal of meds for 2 cats - Toro and Megat.


The syringes are for Megat and it holds his sang hwang + colloidal silver combination in papaya. The 2 water syringes belong to both boys. I make sure that no pill gets stuck in Toro's throat by giving him some water afterwards. Megat also needs water to wash down the residue of his sang hwang + colliodal silver combination. He gets 5 drops of milk thistle in another syringe s it is too sour to be put with his lingzhi. SO I put that in another syringe with papaya. I asked the vets to see if putting meds in blended papaya for the long term was ok and they said it was harmless.

The fluids belong to Toro as well as the biotene. He gets fluids every alternate day and Megat gets his one day a week only.

Toro's pills - cranberry, azodyl, kidney activator, alutab and apo-k.

This is how I hold him for meds. He takes them easily and does not struggle too much. I can control him better if I sit him in front of me.

san: OK Toro. Open your mouth...Good boy!

After each pill, I need to smoothen his neck so the pill gets swallowed easily.
Then Cousin R holds him so I get get to his teeth and gums with the biotene. It is working as now his gums are no longer swollen.

Megat is not to be fooled when it comes to giving him his meds. It is always a game of hide and seek with him when it comes to this. He hates it and would hide. If he gets under the bed, then it would be a monumental task to get hm out again!

Megat knows it is time for meds or subq. He is on high alert.

Megat's pills - Cranberry, Asthma capsule and mushroom combination for him immune-system.

If Toro is the easiest at to pill, then Megat must be the most wily. I need to wrap him up securely in a towel. then he gets his sang hwang suppository. He hates this and would struggle and cry out even before it happens. As we were pilling Toro, we decided, after many years of feeding him all his meds in syringes, that we should try and pill him too. I was a little farid as the last time I did this was last year when he had to take his prednisolone. I had blue-black fingers where his vice-like mouth and clamped onto them.

This time he did not try to clamp his teeth on me but decided to trick me. SO we are very wary of him. Once when I had given him his pill, he pretended that he had swollowed it and made a loud gulping noise. Both Cousin R and I thought he had swallowed his pill and relaxed our grip. "POP!" it came out of his mouth like a firecracker! So now we are more aware and would watch that he had indeed swallowed everything by giving him some papaya which he likes a lot. :)

5 days a week for Megat and 7 days for Toro. I fear one of these days, either Cousin R or myself would have to be the ones who have to swollow some pills ourselves :)

3 comments:

  1. #1 here. Oh my goodness! And I was feeling sorry for myself because I have had to give Yuu-Chan 4 tiny pills a day for the last week.... I stick the pills in either soft cheese or vitamin gel and get them down him that way. He is pretty good-natured bout it.

    I would be interested in hearing more about the Biotene as Yuu-Chan has some gingivitis issues, and I wonder if that would help?

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  2. Anonymous6:56 PM

    Hahhaa...that was the word my daughter used too. When asked which meds (for our cats) work, my daughter rolled her eyes and said, "Who knows, my mother uses the entire arsenal!"

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  3. That's a lot of medication. Wow.

    Personally, I find that tablets are easier to pill than capsules as once they get wet from the saliva, it gets really slippery and will even sometimes get stuck in their throats.

    Actually you may wish to check if Toro really need the once-every-2-days sub-Q. You can miss the deadline by 12 hours and see if he is dehydrated and if he is hydrated, miss it for another 12 hours and so on and only subQ him when he is dehydrated. I find that it relieves the stress level for both the cat and human a lot.

    Wet food with 2 teaspoon of added water helps of course. :)

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