Favorite Mixers For Sneaking In Medications/supplements?

[cheeser]

What are your favorite ways to disguise the taste of medications and supplements in food, or liquids administered via a syringe?

Oscar will let me sneak some supplements in with his meals, and Buddy will enthusiastically chow down certain ones mixed with a dab or two of baby food and water. But I have to resort to feeding the rest via a syringe, and apparently Buddy doesn't think the baby food makes a decent mixer for L-lysine, lactoferrin, Zylkene, and egg yolk lecithin (and I'm sure the slippery elm bark as soon as it finally gets here).

What works best for you and your kitties?

 

[artiemom]

I just use a gel cap for pills and a syringe with a bit of water after for liquid. If your cat can have treats, that is always a good reward..

Guess I am spoiled because Artie is really good about medicines.. nail clipping is a bit different, but I can manage it.

 

[cheeser]

I just use a gel cap for pills and a syringe with a bit of water after for liquid. If your cat can have treats, that is always a good reward..

Guess I am spoiled because Artie is really good about medicines.. nail clipping is a bit different, but I can manage it.

I'm glad Artie is good about medicines. It's always so nerve-wracking when our fur babies are sick, and it's nice to have at least one less thing to worry about.

Unfortunately, Buddy and Oscar are impossible to pill unless they're extremely sick and debilitated. On the bright side, it's a blessing that they feel well enough to fight me as hard as they do.

 

[lalagimp]

Pilling is actually pretty groovy with our boys because they eat the chicken Greenie's Pill Pockets. My little tortie girl won't eat them so we have to pill her the prednisolone when her asthma attacks start kicking in for a few days. It's the liquids that make me nuts because cats know how to spit it everywhere. I let my boyfriend do it. We had to with Tommy for chronic constipation a few years ago because they have him lactulose to get his bowels moving. Recently he was on buprenex and Prazosin but they were just small syringes so he took them well. I love my boy. The buprenex had to be syringed onto his gums for maximum effect.

 

[cheeser]

Pilling is actually pretty groovy with our boys because they eat the chicken Greenie's Pill Pockets. My little tortie girl won't eat them so we have to pill her the prednisolone when her asthma attacks start kicking in for a few days. It's the liquids that make me nuts because cats know how to spit it everywhere. I let my boyfriend do it. We had to with Tommy for chronic constipation a few years ago because they have him lactulose to get his bowels moving. Recently he was on buprenex and Prazosin but they were just small syringes so he took them well. I love my boy. The buprenex had to be syringed onto his gums for maximum effect.

Oh, gosh. I wish our cats would eat pill pockets! Glad that works for your guys.

I can pill cats for up to 2 weeks. Then after that, there's a lot of hissing, yelping, squirming, flailing -- and that's just me!

I've lost count of all the pill masking type products I've bought, and so far, I've struck out on every one of them. I've even tried coating the pills with butter, cheese, chewy treats, and everything else I could think of to disguise their meds and/or supplements. Nope, nope, and nope.

Fortunately, they will eat some of them voluntarily, so that's about half the battle. Now I just need to work on the other half via syringe or whatever else might work. I just wish I could figure out a way to make the syringe stuff more palatable, even though I do follow that up with a goodie that meets with their approval.

 

[IndyJones]

I find the easiest thing is the old tilt and flick.

Tilt cats head back and squeeze the sides of the jaws to open the mouth

Then flick the pill into the back of the mouth and hold the mouth shut while rubbing the esophagus to make them swallow. Watch for lip licking indicating the pill has been swallowed.

This is the same method vets use.

(Reading that back it sounds like torture but it isn't. Doesn't hurt at all and vets use it.

 

[cheeser]

I find the easiest thing is the old tilt and flick.

Tilt cats head back and squeeze the sides of the jaws to open the mouth

Then flick the pill into the back of the mouth and hold the mouth shut while rubbing the esophagus to make them swallow. Watch for lip licking indicating the pill has been swallowed.

This is the same method vets use.

(Reading that back it sounds like torture but it isn't. Doesn't hurt at all and vets use it.

Hee! That's exactly the method I use. Sometimes it also helps to gently blow on their noses as I'm massaging their throats.

Unfortunately, after about two weeks, just that little bit of stress from pilling Buddy is enough to trigger a relapse of some kind. Which means another trip to the vet, another bout of uncontrollable vomiting/diarrhea/peeing from the stress of going to the vet, then the dehydration resulting from that, then the stress of getting him rehydrated via sub-Q fluids or syringe feedings, then having to pill him for whatever the setback was...then I'm pretty much back at square one.

So it's better for both of us if Buddy will willingly take his meds, and the baby food has been a godsend to get some of his meds and supplements into him. I just need to figure out how to help him be more willing about the rest of them.

 

[IndyJones]

Personally I don't blow in their faces because I use that for scolding. I don't want them thinking I'm scolding them for taking their meds.

 

[abyeb]

Charlie is hard to pill. At first the Greenie's pill pockets worked for him, until he figured them out and just started eating the pocket, leaving the pill.

Another trick I heard is to heat up wet food in the microwave until it's warm (not hot, it should feel comfortably warm when you put your finger in it), grinding up the pill, and mixing it in. The fact that the food is warm makes it smellier as well as more flavorful, which, ideally, should disguise the scent/taste of the pill. Unfortunately, this didn't work for Charlie, as he refuses to eat wet food.

If these suggestions fail for you, IndyJones' tilt and flick will work. You can also grind up the pill, mix it with water, and load it into a syringe. Hold the cat's mouth open (as IndyJones instructed), and squirt the stuff in.

 

[cheeser]

Personally I don't blow in their faces because I use that for scolding. I don't want them thinking I'm scolding them for taking their meds.

Ah. That makes sense.

I've gotten to a point where I've given up on scolding my cats. They seem to enjoy seeing me get frustrated. ;-)

 

[cheeser]

Charlie is hard to pill. At first the Greenie's pill pockets worked for him, until he figured them out and just started eating the pocket, leaving the pill.

Another trick I heard is to heat up wet food in the microwave until it's warm (not hot, it should feel comfortably warm when you put your finger in it), grinding up the pill, and mixing it in. The fact that the food is warm makes it smellier as well as more flavorful, which, ideally, should disguise the scent/taste of the pill. Unfortunately, this didn't work for Charlie, as he refuses to eat wet food.

Isn't that the way it always works? You have some success a few times and you think you have that problem licked, and then our cats get wise to our tricks.

I haven't had any luck with warming up his food for the icky tasting meds and supplements, but it works great for the ones Buddy finds palatable! And warming up the food for his meals is a huge help when he's more congested than usual. Except I usually just put his can of food in the pocket of my jeans about an hour before mealtimes to warm it up, and it winds up being about 'mouse' temperature when I open the can. That way I don't have to worry about any hot spots.

I'm just grateful that all of my cats' meds and supplements can be administered by mixing them with liquid and administered via syringe if need be. That's a huge help.

 

[laura mae]

It's so hard with some cats. I've found that if I can get a medication compounded in liquid, that's the easiest. With one squirrely cat, the medication in the baby food always works. I feed them treats of baby food sometimes when there is no medication needed so it always feels like a happy treat. I have a cat that is the best medicine taker ever. He gets a good boy treat after. My sweet Etta, who I tried like hell to save, hated the medications. She took them. I used a pill shooter for her and put the pills in the gel caps. I found the smallest that I could fit her medication doses in. Pill pockets worked with her exactly once.

 

[jcat]

When our last cat had to take a number of pills a day for his heart condition (HCM), I had to get rather inventive:
Ideas for "hiding" pills?
What seems to work for most cats at the shelter is liverwurst. For those that don't like that, we put the pill(s) in chicken-flavored gelatin capsules, which a lot of cats will eat as "treats". Failing that, the capsules go down a lot easier than a pill. If the pill isn't bitter and can be ground up, it can also be mixed in with a little half and half or a liquid treat (if available; there are a couple of brands in Europe).

 

[cheeser]

It's so hard with some cats. I've found that if I can get a medication compounded in liquid, that's the easiest. With one squirrely cat, the medication in the baby food always works. I feed them treats of baby food sometimes when there is no medication needed so it always feels like a happy treat. I have a cat that is the best medicine taker ever. He gets a good boy treat after. My sweet Etta, who I tried like hell to save, hated the medications. She took them. I used a pill shooter for her and put the pills in the gel caps. I found the smallest that I could fit her medication doses in. Pill pockets worked with her exactly once.

Isn't amazing how what works for one cat, won't work for another? They definitely keep up on our toes!

 

[cheeser]

What seems to work for most cats at the shelter is liverwurst. For those that don't like that, we put the pill(s) in chicken-flavored gelatin capsules, which a lot of cats will eat as "treats". Failing that, the capsules go down a lot easier than a pill. If the pill isn't bitter and can be ground up, it can also be mixed in with a little half and half or a liquid treat (if available; there are a couple of brands in Europe).

Oooh! I think liverwurst is about the only thing I haven't tried yet. I'm definitely going to buy some as soon as I can find it. Thanks oodles!

 

[stephanietx]

For pills, we use cheese. My kitties LOVE cheese, so I usually tear off a little piece of American cheese and mold it around the pill since it's easily pliable with the heat of your hands. Sometimes I use a small chunk of cheddar cheese. My cats are very good at taking their supplements in their wet food with a little bit of water added.

 

[IndyJones]

Part of my problem is some pills are time release so you can't crush them or they don't work properly.