Using Elavil For Anxious Cat

[ameliashuman]

Last September an older stray cat adopted us, and although he loves the humans of the house, he can not get comfortable with the two other cats. Hisses, growls, spends all night yelling at them, and urinates in fun places like the bedroom, kitchen, family room exc... We've taken him to the vet multiple times to make sure it wasn't medical and based on our tracking of when/where the peeing occurs it is very clearly behavioral. We've tried to do the positive association interventions but he can't relax at all.
So our vet gave us a prescription of Elavil with the hope of stopping the inappropriate peeing and decrease the anxiety so we start the positive association training.

However we're leaving this Fri for the holidays and we were going to have our cat sitter skip Christmas day since they're fine with one day skipped, however if our old man is on .1ml of Elavil will that hurt him? Or should we just wait until after the holidays to start the med?

 

[Columbine]

It takes around six weeks for Elavil to reach therapeutic levels in the bloodstream, so missing one day so early on in the treatment shouldn't make any difference. Given how stressed and upset your boy seems right now, I'd want to start him the the meds asap, so that it can get into his system that bit sooner.

I really hope the meds help, and that he starts to relax and chill a bit very soon