Kitten with seizures isn't getting her medicine

[Brom’s Mom]

I'm at my wits end. One of our foster’s kittens has suddenly broke out with seizures three-four weeks ago. She is 4 months old. She was running a low temp with a ridiculously high WBC. Our vet isn't sure what happened. After two weeks of Clindamycin and twice daily Gabapentin, she had four days of no seizures. Now she's having two a day.

I suspect it is due to her increasingly difficult behavior as it comes to eating her Gabapentin. We were putting it in her canned food and she’d slowly eat it. Now she doesn't want it at all. She only wants kibble. She won't eat Churu anymore either because we've used medicine with it. To make matters worse, she fights me so hard now when I try via syringe, she seizes. She's having more seizures due to this and loosing her little happy self. She's becoming more reserved and is liking me a lot less as her medicine giver. The Gabapentin is a powder and there is a lot of it. She didn't eating the medicine and it's causing things to get worse I fear.

 

[di and bob]

Try Delectable Lickables in the stew flavors, it is a lickable gel treat in the treat section. I put all my meds in it for my cats, they all love it!

 

[FeebysOwner]

Call the vet and tell them what is going on. Perhaps they can prescribe something else, as Gabapentin is pretty nasty tasting. You could also look into compounding Gabapentin with some sort of flavoring. It might take several renditions to find one that will work for her. Look at Wedgewood Pharmacy's site to get an idea of what they can do to compound it; the pharmacists will also answer basic questions even before they obtain a prescription from your vet. Veterinary Pharmacy for Compounded Pet Medications (wedgewoodpharmacy.com)

There are other lickable treats, including the one mentioned above, but I personally never found anything that successfully hid the taste of Gabapentin for my cat.

There is this video about different ways to administer pills that you might want to look at.

 

[Brom’s Mom]

Call the vet and tell them what is going on. Perhaps they can prescribe something else, as Gabapentin is pretty nasty tasting. You could also look into compounding Gabapentin with some sort of flavoring. It might take several renditions to find one that will work for her. Look at Wedgewood Pharmacy's site to get an idea of what they can do to compound it; the pharmacists will also answer basic questions even before they obtain a prescription from your vet. Veterinary Pharmacy for Compounded Pet Medications (wedgewoodpharmacy.com)

There are other lickable treats, including the one mentioned above, but I personally never found anything that successfully hid the taste of Gabapentin for my cat.

There is this video about different ways to administer pills that you might want to look at.

Thank you so much for this. Our vet told us gabapentin was basically tasteless

Clearly it is not! I will see what can be done for our kitten. Poor girl didn't respond to phenobarbital which would've been so easy to give in food. I'll have to contact the vet again. They're probably sick of me calling lol..

 

[FeebysOwner]

It is partly the vet's own fault, as Gabapentin is NOT tasteless. Although, I will admit many vets - even those who know how bad it tastes - still try and get cats to take it because it is so effective for so many things.

 

[heatherwillard0614]

Awww poor baby. I will say I am lucky with my vet when she prescribed my cat gabapentin she said it would probably be too sedative for her and we said we could break the pill in half. She said it was a capsule so we couldn't do that. Rhen the tech recommended the liquid and the vet refused because of the taste of it so we got it compounded into a tablet form.

I would definitely call your vet and ask about getting it compounded into a pill form