Care Guides

My cat can hear a blister pack from two rooms away. The first dose is always easy, because she has no idea what is coming. Dose two is the problem. By then she has connected the crackle of foil with being handled, and she is flat under the bed with her ears back. If you have ever found half a tablet welded to a sofa cushion three hours after you swore the cat swallowed it, you know how this goes.

Most of it is decided before you leave the practice, and hardly anyone asks the right questions at the counter. Can the tablet be split or crushed? With food or on an empty stomach? Does the same drug come as a liquid, a flavoured chew, an ear gel, or an injection they can give in the clinic instead? What happens if a dose runs late? Write the answers on the box, because you will not remember them by Thursday.

That splitting question matters. Some tablets are coated to survive the stomach, and crushing one wrecks the drug. Extended-release versions dump their whole dose at once when broken. Others are viciously bitter underneath, which is how you end up with a foaming cat and a bad association that lasts months. A score line usually means it can be halved, but check first, and use a pill splitter rather than a kitchen knife.

Hiding the dose in food works more often than the internet suggests, provided you do it properly. The mistake is one obviously suspicious lump of cheese. Use three: a plain one, the loaded one, then another plain one, handed over fast enough that the animal is already swallowing on reflex when the medicated one arrives. Soft mouldable pill treats earn their money on a long course. Cream cheese or a folded slice of ham does the same job, and a strong lick paste usually wins with cats.

What you should not do is hide it in the main meal. If they detect it, and cats will, you have soured their opinion of the food they eat every day. A sick cat that goes off its dinner is a much bigger problem than a spat-out tablet.

Getting a tablet in when hiding it has failed

Set up before you fetch the animal. Pill in your palm, a syringe of water or a spoon of wet food ready, and a spot on the floor where they cannot back into a corner. Kneel beside them rather than looming over the face. Speed beats force: a five-second attempt that fails beats a thirty-second wrestle that works, because the wrestle is what they remember.

For a cat, rest your free hand over the top of the head with thumb and middle finger on the cheekbones. Tilt the nose towards the ceiling and the lower jaw drops open almost by itself. Ease it down and place the tablet as far back over the tongue as you can reach, over the hump rather than in the middle where it gets flicked out. A plastic pill giver reaches further back than most of us manage by hand. Close the mouth, stroke the throat, and watch for the lick of the lips that tells you it has gone.

Dogs are simpler. Hand over the muzzle, thumb slipped in behind the long canine tooth, tablet at the back of the tongue, mouth closed, throat stroked. Then a treat, always, even when it has been a shambles.

The water chaser is not optional for cats

This is the part most owners have never been told. A dry tablet or capsule given to a cat with nothing to wash it down can stall in the oesophagus instead of reaching the stomach. Some drugs are notorious for it, doxycycline and clindamycin among them, and a tablet left sitting against that lining can cause ulceration and scarring that ends in a narrowed gullet needing specialist treatment. So follow every tablet with about six millilitres of water syringed into the cheek pouch, or a teaspoon of wet food. Five seconds, every time.

Liquids look like the soft option and cause more trouble, mostly because people squirt them at the back of the throat. Slide the syringe into the pouch between cheek and back teeth, keep the head level rather than tipped back, and deliver small amounts with pauses. A dribble down the chin is normal. A coughing fit is not, and repeated coughing after a dose is worth reporting, because that is how aspiration pneumonia starts.

Eye drops without the flinch

Come from behind and above rather than bringing a bottle up towards the face, which any sensible animal ducks. Steady the head, pull the lower lid down into a small pocket, and let the drop fall from a centimetre above. Never touch the nozzle to the eye or the lashes. Blinking spreads it, so nothing needs holding open. With two different drops, leave five minutes between them or the second washes out the first, and put ointment in last.

Two failed attempts is my limit. Then stop, put them down, do not chase anyone round the house, and write that dose off. Ring the practice and say plainly that it is not working, because vets have options they rarely offer unless asked: a flavoured liquid from a compounding pharmacy, a transdermal gel rubbed into the ear, a chewable, or a different drug in the same family. Never abandon an antibiotic course because it is difficult, and never double up for a missed dose.

Two things are not negotiable. Never give human painkillers to a pet; paracetamol kills cats and ibuprofen wrecks kidneys and stomachs in both species, at doses smaller than people assume. And if your pet swallows the wrong medication, phone your vet or an animal poison line immediately with the packet in your hand.

The rest is routine. Same time, same place, same treat afterwards, done briskly and without apology in your voice, because animals read hesitation as a reason to worry. My cat still leaves the room when she hears foil. She also comes back for the tuna.