Bleah! Taking medicine is never fun. Just like children, we cats are more than reticent to take any pill or liquid medicine, but if there’s no way of getting around it, you’ll have to roll up your sleeves and get to work to make sure we keep the medicine down so it will help us get well.
Before going and giving us just anything you may think up yourself to help us combat what is making us sick, I ask you to please take us to see the veterinarian. A specialist is the only human able to decide what medicine we need and what doses are right for us to take.
Now that we’ve gotten that clear, the first thing you should try is to give us the medicine hidden in our food. For pills, try mashing them up well and mixing them into our favorite food, making certain beforehand that we’re hungry and usually finish up everything you put on our plate. You can also get some of those treats specially-designed for giving us our medicines. Yes, the ones that are so sticky that it’s impossible for us to separate the medicine from the treat itself.
If you opt for giving us the pill directly, you can always get a “cat pill gun”, which is nothing but a sort of pill-holding syringe, which, once we have our mouth open, places the pill on the edge of our throat so we’ll swallow it. Another alternative is to do that yourself. To do so, after wrapping us up in a towel, gently open our mouth and place the pill as far back as possible on our tongue, not forgetting to gently rub our throat to help us swallow the pill. Now, make sure the pill doesn’t split open inside our mouth, because the unpleasant bitter taste will make us not want to go through this same experience again.
If the medicine is in liquid form, you can always use the syringe that comes with the medicine to help you put the liquid into our mouth through our back teeth by inserting it directly into the back of the mouth. Also gently rub our throat and blow into our nose so we’ll swallow without any problem. Avoid squirting the medicine directly into our throat or onto our tongue, which could go down the wrong way and gag or choke us. And don’t forget to give us some treat to eat when we’ve gotten the job all done.
In the event that the medicine has to be absorbed through the skin, you can always put in into our inner ear. But remember that you must wear gloves so that your own body will not absorb the medicine. If eye drops are what we need, be careful so as not to hurt our eyes with the dropper. If you can get someone to help you put our drops in, all the better. Lastly, for shots, it’s better for the veterinarian to give us those, but if you must give us shots at home, get your veterinarian to teach you so that you will know how to give us our shots correctly.
