cats

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Pill pockets

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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).

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 :)

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.