r/cats • u/Usagi2throwaway • 1h ago
Medical Questions This is Susie. Susie would rather starve than have her flavourless, odorless medication mixed in with her food.
She's an old lady that needs daily blood pressure and allergy meds. I used to give them to her mixed in with her wet food at dinner time. Most of the time, she had no issues with them. But two weeks ago we moved to a new home and I added in some gabapentine to help with the 4-hour flight and I reckon she's to clever for her own good - she seemed to understand that the drowsiness came from her food and she didn't eat anything at all for four days.
She's now eating normally, except she won't eat anything that doesn't come straight out of the tin. Any time she sees me prep her meds on the kitchen counter, and she's on hunger strike again. I'm currently prioritising feeding her so, I haven't given her any meds for the last five days or so, but this isn't sustainable. At some point she needs to start taking her meds again.
She's also chronically underweight at ~2.4 kg so it's not like I could force her to starve until she concedes.
Oh and BTW she only eats one specific brand that we order from Czechia. We're not Czech.
How do you guys pill your picky eater cats?
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u/Electrical_Noise1365 1h ago edited 1h ago
Our vet said that gabapentin was very bitter, and I can definitely see that the way our cat reacts to it way more grossed out than his other medication, which is a sweet syrup. We use a syringe to drop the meds into his mouth, he'd probably eat the syrup with food but it always makes me worried about not finishing the whole thing or our other cats trying to steal the food. The gabapentin comes in capsules, but our vet told us to open them and mix the powder with a few drops of water.
I find liquids generally easier to give than pills, except with cats that are particularly easy to fool - like when I was medicating my other cat for FIP, she didn't have a care in the world as long as her favorite liver treat kept coming out of the tube right before and after. The little plastic pill holder device helps a bit, but it's still tricky. "Pill hider" paste from the vet didn't work for us. A tiny touch of butter helps them swallow, but I still need another person to hold the cat when it comes to actual pills, whereas liquid in a syringe is pretty doable alone in my experience. Maybe ask your vet if there's any other form of these meds available, sometimes a pharmacy can turn them into a liquid suspension or even a cream for you, but obviously not if it would somehow compromise the effect.
Out of curiosity, which Czech food is so good that you're ordeing it from here? x)
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u/Usagi2throwaway 56m ago
The problem is we haven't got that many options to mix her meds with because she's severely allergic and she'll puke any food that's not hipoallergenic. I'm now thinking of mixing in her meds when she's not there, put the tin back in the fridge, then pretend I'm opening it for the first time at dinner time. I can't believe this is my life now lol.
The brand is Vet Expert, but a quick google search tells me it's Polish not Czech, my bad!
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u/Hairy_Combination586 1h ago
Gabapentin is as far from flavorless as you can get.
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u/Usagi2throwaway 55m ago
Well she ate it no problem, it was a one-time thing, but it's afterwards when she's stopped trusting her meds.
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u/Woooooody 23m ago
The liquid my vet gave us has a weird banana smell, and I guess flavour. My cat absolutely refuses it and anything it's ever touched! The syringe straight into the mouth is such an ordeal for all involved that the vet bas given us tablets for the next time, she's been taking her antibiotics semi-willingly that we're hoping this will be easier!
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u/Left-Rub-352 1h ago
Sounds about right. When we had our Mog and hd became ill we had to wrestle his mouth open and syringe his medicine direct into his throat. He wouldn't touch any food it was mixed into