Anyone who owns a cat will know what a struggle it can be to get your cat to take medication. This brief article on Cat Medication covers some useful techniques which will help you give medication to your cat.

If the cat medication is in pill form then try crushing the pill (you can do this between two spoons) and mixing the powder in the cat's food. Sometimes the cat will sense that something is not quite right and ignore the food so try maybe giving them something different for a change which they may perceive as a treat. Also wet food is easier for disguising the powder.

If the cat medication is the form of a capsule then break open the capsule and sprinkle the contents into the cat's food as above.

If the above techniques fail to work, then talk to your local pharmacy or vet and see if they would prepare the medication in a special flavored gel or liquid which your cat is more likely to consume.

Other techniques require almost forcing the medication down your cat’s throat. You can buy what is usually called a 'pet pillar' which is quite simply a plastic tube which you insert into your cat's mouth and drop the pill or capsule so that it goes to the back of the cats throat. Some of these come with a fancy trigger mechanism which shoots the pill or capsule into the cat’s mouth. You can also try doing this by hand without the pet pillar but you may find the cat will struggle and not open its mouth for you.

If all else fails then I can almost guarantee that this final technique will work but most cat owners hate to do this. Pick the cat up with one hand by grabbing the loose skin/fur behind the neck (sometimes described as grabbing by the scruff of the neck) and then tilt the cat's head backwards so that its mouth is facing upwards. You will find that this temporarily paralyses the cat with its mouth open making it easy for you to drop the medication inside. You then simply lower the cat's head and let go of its neck. Usually it will swallow the medication with an instinctive reaction. The reason why many cat owners do not like to do this is because they think they are hurting the cat in some way and get very frightened when it goes motionless when tilting the head back - but believe me the cat does not feel a thing and is much better than struggling to force the cat's mouth open in any other way.

Copyright 2006 by Richard G M Taylor

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