So these days, just about every animal in the house is getting some sort of medication or other; Trixie gets her Proin and just recently finished up her antibiotics from the life-preserver incident, Trouble gets her periodic shot of enulose (or possibly rum), and Tucker gets his Soloxine plus a raft of other nostrums that my wife has collected in her ongoing, and so far unsuccessful, attempt to curtail his symptoms. All of which got me thinking about how different medicating a cat is from medicating a dog.
To give a pill to one of the dogs, we just put it in something edible or even quasi-edible and present it to them. Lately I’ve been giving Tucker his Soloxine tucked into a blueberry, like so:
The pill can be wrapped in pepperoni, or smeared with butter, or even just tossed it into the bowl with the dog food; however it’s done, the dogs will cheerfully gobble the pill with their food, no questions asked. If the medication is a flavored liquid, the dogs will usually lick it right up; if it’s unflavored, then it can be squirted onto their food. Gobble gobble gobble, all gone.
Then there’s the cat.
If we put a pill in the cat’s food, then when we come back, we’ll find an empty bowl with a pill sitting in the bottom. If we crush the pill to powder, we’ll find an empty bowl with a little pile of powder at the bottom. If the medication is a liquid and we inject it into the food, we’ll come back to find an untouched pile of medicated food and a cat that’s giving us the evil eye. (Well, that always happens.)
For a long time, we’ve been impressed and baffled by Trouble’s uncanny ability to detect when her food has been adulterated; but recently, we set up a small hidden camera inside her box, and now the secret can be revealed:
The Oceanside Animals 
that’s so darn funny!!!!!
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So many of us on on medicine! We need a lab, too!
Thank you for stopping by our blog and giving Shay, our foster cat good wishes. Sadly he had to go to The Bridge yesterday. Momma is heartbroken.
~ Timothy
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I used to have a Rottweiller like the cat. The only way was to open his mouth which proved a struggle ‘cos he new it mean a pill would follow, then push it as far down his throat as possible. I still had to hold his mouth shut for quite a while till I was sure it was swallowed.
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Strange, disturbing but hilarious picture! I think little dogs are different from big dogs. Mandy will find the pill no matter what you put it in and will eat the treat, cheese, peanut butter, etc. and leave the pill. We have to crush it up and mix it with peanut butter or she won’t take it.
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We’ve started giving out 17 year old bichon an aspirin a day for his arthritis. We’ve hidden it in his food, and the next day we always find it tucked next to his bowl, under a pillow, behind his ear. And yet he’ll eat potting soil.
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Omigosh, did this make me laugh! It’s so true … 🙂
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Having had plenty of foster cats, I definitely prefer to force a pill down an 80-lb dog’s throat, thank you very much. Big dogs are easy to grip and hold; cats will twist and squirm and scratch and bite until you’re left with nothing but a fistful of fur, dizziness from blood loss… good god, is that the pill on the floor??
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It’s nice to see a fresh take on a hilarious subject. There used to be a funny that made the rounds of e-mail inboxes, entitled “How to Give a Pill to a Cat”, with about eighteen lines of instruction that went from perfectly correct to perfectly ludicrous. Almost as a postscript there followed a second heading, “How to Give a Pill to a Dog”, with one line: “Wrap it in bacon”. Seems you experience confirms the e-mail version.
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Dogs are so much easier to fool with medicine, then cats are. With Jake we just throw a pill in a hotdog and its down, liquid medicine no problem – he loves it. The cats on the other hand, try putting flea med on their neck and they are gone …..
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ROFL, almost literally!! You forgot about trying to use paste, how it comes out of their mouth frothing like they have rabies and they shake their head to remove it from their mouth but it ends up coating the freaking walls!! hahah
You have just made my day!! :))
(Vic’s Momma) 🙂
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Very funny, and very true. Peanut butter works well. They even make things called “pill pockets” made out of some kind of meat-flavor-smelling substance that you can stick the pill in and then pinch it together. Not sure if they make ’em for cats though. Cats are just too darned smart to be fooled by anything flavored by bacon .. but maybe if it smelled like sardines!
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I don’t like pills either! i wont eat any of my dinner if there is apill in it, yuk! mom has to shove it down my throat, which i don’t like either!
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That cat picture is hilarious!!
Giving medication to rats can be torture – for me, not the rats.
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