32 ms·

> “I’m convinced that half of the human cases that come from cats are people who are trying to stuff pills down their cat’s throats to treat the sporotrichosis,

> “I’m convinced that half of the human cases that come from cats are people who are trying to stuff pills down their cat’s throats to treat the sporotrichosis,” Do yourself a favor, crush the pill and put it in food. Problem solved. Difficult with multiple cats but I had two and one needed medication so I put this little guys on a window sill he loved to perch on which the other cat didn't care to reach.

pikminguy 4mo ago
A. I have cats that don't go anywhere special that the other cats don't go so that doesn't work unless I supervise. B. It's difficult to make sure they get the entire dose, again unless you supervise. And good luck getting a cat to finish food they've decided they are done with. C. I have cats that are picky enough to ignore any food that has a crushed pill in it. They can always tell. Yes even if I use smelly food. D. Not all medications can be safely crushed. Slowly dissolving in the stomach could be an important aspect of the delivery.
- mschuster91 4mo ago
  > Slowly dissolving in the stomach could be an important aspect of the delivery. Depends on the coating - some coatings only dissolve once they are out of the strongly acidic stomach. Slow dissolution is used in retarded medication, which may or may not be coincident with targeting post-stomach delivery.
  - pikminguy 4mo ago
    Yeah I was trying to get the general point of "crushing the pill could interfere with effective delivery of the medicine" without getting too far into the weeds. Honestly it's usually fine and I do think mixing crushed pills with food is an important tool in a pet owners belt. It's just not the universal solution that was being implied.
jsiepkes 4mo ago
Its not always that easy. For example cerenia tastes very bitter for a cat. My cat will start drooling almost uncontrollably if he tastes it. He has a kidney condition and needs it for the rest of his life. I've tried crushing it, but he will then just ignore the food because of the bitter taste of the pill. Putting it in something like easy-pill will work a couple of times. Until he realizes the disgusting taste he is going to experience when eating the easy-pill. At that point you can't trick him anymore with an easy-pill. So the only way I can give it to him (without drama) is by putting it deep into his mouth so he never tastes it and immediately swallows it.
- sillystuff 4mo ago
  Some drugs are available online / locally through compounding pharmacies as transdermal creams that you apply to the inner surface of the cat's ear. From a quick search, it looks like cerenia is available in this form. Your last sentence, "[pilling cat] (without drama) is by putting it deep into his mouth" must mean you have a very chill cat [emphasis mine].
  - georgemcbay 4mo ago
    Can confirm, transdermal maropitant (cerenia) worked very well for my cat who was dealing with both CKD and IBD in her later years (she passed away in December). I bought it off of Chewy, but there are other places that compound it into a transdermal as well. > Your last sentence, "[pilling cat] (without drama) is by putting it deep into his mouth" must mean you have a very chill cat [emphasis mine]. I'm not the person you are replying to, but for my cat putting any pills deep into her mouth meant using a piller device. Luckily my cat was totally non-aggressive, so when it came time to take pills she would try to evade, but never attack, but she was pretty good at undulating her tongue to try to swat pills out. Over her last year or so she was getting multiple medications per day (and subcutaneous fluids 3x a week) so being able to do some of them as transdermals helped lessen the stress of getting everything into her.
    - jsiepkes 4mo ago
drdexebtjl 4mo ago
This doesn’t necessarily work. Some pills taste bad, and the cat will refuse weird-tasting food. I recommend everyone who has healthy cats to talk to their vet about administering empty capsules. Just so you and the cat get comfortable with the process before you need it. Kind of like you need to train them from an early age that clipping their nails is fine. When your cat gets old, they will need to take oral supplements, at the very least. You’re the person they trust the most to give them.
- thijson 4mo ago
  Maybe mix it with cat nip. My Mom used to have to mix medicine in with the pig's feed. They were very good at eating around the medicine. To get around that she would prepare a concoction of beer and molasses and feed and the medicine. They then ate all of it.
- hombre_fatal 4mo ago
  > When your cat gets old > You’re the person they trust the most -_- Gave my spry lil five year old critter a hug. He doesn't deserve to get old.
  - fatata123 4mo ago
    [dead]
AdamN 4mo ago
I may be crazy but I feel like we shouldn't be giving medicine to animals with communicable diseases (unless the medicine reduces the chances of animal->human transmission). We're just reducing the effectiveness of these medicines over time.
- drdexebtjl 4mo ago
  Citation needed. We ought to have learned after the Covid “herd immunity” policies that killed hundreds of thousands around the world, that infectious disease control should be grounded on actual research, and not on simplified world models. Researchers currently recommend treatment.
  - CalRobert 4mo ago
    I think they meant to cull them
    - drdexebtjl 4mo ago
      I understand, didn’t mean to imply they were suggesting herd immunity. But then you’ll have people not taking their cats to the vet because they don’t want them to be culled, increasing exposure and limiting our access to reliable data. My point is, take this uninformed opinion that goes against the researchers’ recommendation for what it is: wrong.
  - AdamN 4mo ago
    They recommend treatment because the mandate is to keep the animals alive, not whether or not it's good long term for humans. Many doctors and vets though are against the mass use of antibiotics in industrial farming (literally as a prophylactic so they get the antibiotics just in case) but it's not having much of an impact it seems.
    - drdexebtjl 4mo ago
      > the mandate is to keep the animals alive By whom? > mass use of antibiotics in industrial farming This is a completely different issue. No one's doing mass prophylactic treatment against this fungus, and even if we treated every single cat in the world, there are 60 times more chickens. Industrial farming is on a completely different scale. > doctors and vets Unless they're citing research supporting their opinion, it's as irrelevant as any other non-specialist.
thoughtpalette 4mo ago
Pill pocket treats have been great for this exact purpose.
- Finnucane 4mo ago
  None of my cats would eat those. Regular soft cat treats have always worked better.
  - thoughtpalette 4mo ago
    Ahh, YMMV then. My cats go nuts for them. We call them their "special meatball"
Finnucane 4mo ago
When I had to give my cats thyroid pills, I mushed them into soft treats. This generally worked, but sometimes took a couple of tries. But this trick only works if the cat wants the treat more than they don't want the pill. A dog can be tricked into thinking the pill is the treat. Flavored pill compounding is apparently also an option, but I've never tried it.
mschuster91 4mo ago
> Do yourself a favor, crush the pill and put it in food. This does not work on compounds sensitive to stomach acids. Some medications (both veterinarian and human) have to be specially coated to survive this environment [1], if you crush the pills the medication gets less effective, completely ineffective or, like ibuprofen, irritate the stomach. Or, worst case, the medication is designed for retarded release in the stomach acid - and now that you've crushed it, the entirety of the compound is dissolved in the stomach at once. Please always ask your veterinarian/physician, the pharmacy staff and always read the medication's application notes because particularly physicians often are unaware and the same ingredient on the prescription might be fulfilled by a crushable or a non-crushable variant which only the pharmacist knows. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magensaftresistente_Tablette https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magensaftresistente_Tablette
- robocat 4mo ago
  > like ibuprofen Your conclusion is based on your misunderstanding: perhaps take more care in future, and be especially careful if sharing your misinformation. After absorption into the bloodstream, ibuprofen indirectly reduces the prostaglandins that normally protect the stomach lining crushing ibuprofen can make local irritation more intense and quicker, but this is usually not the main driver of ulcers And sorry if the above is misleading, I'm no expert in this stuff either.
  - ahartmetz 4mo ago
    To go further on this tangent, just mentioning it because it's rather useful: Studies show that vitamin C protects the stomach lining from stomach acid - unclear why exactly, but clear that it does. There are pills that combine the two, but you can also just buy some vitamin C and take it it with the pills. Like all water-soluble vitamins, you can't really overdose: the excess is excreted.
    - robocat 4mo ago
      And you've just done the same mistake? Taking too much vitamin C [acidic] can cause side effects, including: Upset stomach, vomiting and loose stools. Heartburn. Stomach cramps or bloating. https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements-vitamin-c/art-20363932 https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements-vitamin-c/art-2... I mean what you've said is interesting (albeit irrelevant to ibuprofen given the pathway).
dormento 4mo ago
> Do yourself a favor, crush the pill and put it in food. PROTIP never ever do this. The cat might just decide food is not worth having and develop liver and stomach issues. Bastards won't tell you anything is wrong, then they'll just crawl into a hole, as usual. Source: I had the same not-good, very very bad idea and almost killed mine once. Had to go for a feeding tube and all. If you must give you cat medicine in pill form, just use one of those silicone pill "siringes" with flexible tips (and give it some Churu or similar to train it to tolerate medicine better). Washable, no fuss, quick and easy.
- euroderf 4mo ago
  > then they'll just crawl into a hole, as usual. My wife's family's countryside ex-farm has a barn, and out in the barn we found... a mummified cat. By mummified I mean, desiccated, hairless, but much more than a mere skeleton. Damnedest thing.
atombender 4mo ago
You shouldn't do this, as others have said. Also, some medications must not be crushed at all. In my experience, the best way to give cats pills is a pill pocket, e.g. from Greenies [1]. The pocket is a hollow, soft cat treat. You put the pill inside the pocket, close it, and feed it to the cat. With some larger pills, you may have to split them up (if the medication allows). Some cats don't love the flavor, but you can use a sauce packet and coat it with some sauce. [1] https://www.greenies.com/collections/cat-pill-pockets https://www.greenies.com/collections/cat-pill-pockets

pikminguy 4mo ago

A. I have cats that don't go anywhere special that the other cats don't go so that doesn't work unless I supervise. B. It's difficult to make sure they get the entire dose, again unless you supervise. And good luck getting a cat to finish food they've decided they are done with. C. I have cats that are picky enough to ignore any food that has a crushed pill in it. They can always tell. Yes even if I use smelly food. D. Not all medications can be safely crushed. Slowly dissolving in the stomach could be an important aspect of the delivery.

mschuster91 4mo ago
> Slowly dissolving in the stomach could be an important aspect of the delivery. Depends on the coating - some coatings only dissolve once they are out of the strongly acidic stomach. Slow dissolution is used in retarded medication, which may or may not be coincident with targeting post-stomach delivery.
- pikminguy 4mo ago
  Yeah I was trying to get the general point of "crushing the pill could interfere with effective delivery of the medicine" without getting too far into the weeds. Honestly it's usually fine and I do think mixing crushed pills with food is an important tool in a pet owners belt. It's just not the universal solution that was being implied.

jsiepkes 4mo ago

Its not always that easy. For example cerenia tastes very bitter for a cat. My cat will start drooling almost uncontrollably if he tastes it. He has a kidney condition and needs it for the rest of his life. I've tried crushing it, but he will then just ignore the food because of the bitter taste of the pill. Putting it in something like easy-pill will work a couple of times. Until he realizes the disgusting taste he is going to experience when eating the easy-pill. At that point you can't trick him anymore with an easy-pill. So the only way I can give it to him (without drama) is by putting it deep into his mouth so he never tastes it and immediately swallows it.

sillystuff 4mo ago
Some drugs are available online / locally through compounding pharmacies as transdermal creams that you apply to the inner surface of the cat's ear. From a quick search, it looks like cerenia is available in this form. Your last sentence, "[pilling cat] (without drama) is by putting it deep into his mouth" must mean you have a very chill cat [emphasis mine].
- georgemcbay 4mo ago
  Can confirm, transdermal maropitant (cerenia) worked very well for my cat who was dealing with both CKD and IBD in her later years (she passed away in December). I bought it off of Chewy, but there are other places that compound it into a transdermal as well. > Your last sentence, "[pilling cat] (without drama) is by putting it deep into his mouth" must mean you have a very chill cat [emphasis mine]. I'm not the person you are replying to, but for my cat putting any pills deep into her mouth meant using a piller device. Luckily my cat was totally non-aggressive, so when it came time to take pills she would try to evade, but never attack, but she was pretty good at undulating her tongue to try to swat pills out. Over her last year or so she was getting multiple medications per day (and subcutaneous fluids 3x a week) so being able to do some of them as transdermals helped lessen the stress of getting everything into her.
  - jsiepkes 4mo ago

drdexebtjl 4mo ago

This doesn’t necessarily work. Some pills taste bad, and the cat will refuse weird-tasting food. I recommend everyone who has healthy cats to talk to their vet about administering empty capsules. Just so you and the cat get comfortable with the process before you need it. Kind of like you need to train them from an early age that clipping their nails is fine. When your cat gets old, they will need to take oral supplements, at the very least. You’re the person they trust the most to give them.

thijson 4mo ago
Maybe mix it with cat nip. My Mom used to have to mix medicine in with the pig's feed. They were very good at eating around the medicine. To get around that she would prepare a concoction of beer and molasses and feed and the medicine. They then ate all of it.
hombre_fatal 4mo ago
> When your cat gets old > You’re the person they trust the most -_- Gave my spry lil five year old critter a hug. He doesn't deserve to get old.
- fatata123 4mo ago
  [dead]

AdamN 4mo ago

I may be crazy but I feel like we shouldn't be giving medicine to animals with communicable diseases (unless the medicine reduces the chances of animal->human transmission). We're just reducing the effectiveness of these medicines over time.

drdexebtjl 4mo ago
Citation needed. We ought to have learned after the Covid “herd immunity” policies that killed hundreds of thousands around the world, that infectious disease control should be grounded on actual research, and not on simplified world models. Researchers currently recommend treatment.
- CalRobert 4mo ago
  I think they meant to cull them
  - drdexebtjl 4mo ago
    I understand, didn’t mean to imply they were suggesting herd immunity. But then you’ll have people not taking their cats to the vet because they don’t want them to be culled, increasing exposure and limiting our access to reliable data. My point is, take this uninformed opinion that goes against the researchers’ recommendation for what it is: wrong.
- AdamN 4mo ago
  They recommend treatment because the mandate is to keep the animals alive, not whether or not it's good long term for humans. Many doctors and vets though are against the mass use of antibiotics in industrial farming (literally as a prophylactic so they get the antibiotics just in case) but it's not having much of an impact it seems.
  - drdexebtjl 4mo ago
    > the mandate is to keep the animals alive By whom? > mass use of antibiotics in industrial farming This is a completely different issue. No one's doing mass prophylactic treatment against this fungus, and even if we treated every single cat in the world, there are 60 times more chickens. Industrial farming is on a completely different scale. > doctors and vets Unless they're citing research supporting their opinion, it's as irrelevant as any other non-specialist.

thoughtpalette 4mo ago

Pill pocket treats have been great for this exact purpose.

Finnucane 4mo ago
None of my cats would eat those. Regular soft cat treats have always worked better.
- thoughtpalette 4mo ago
  Ahh, YMMV then. My cats go nuts for them. We call them their "special meatball"

Finnucane 4mo ago

When I had to give my cats thyroid pills, I mushed them into soft treats. This generally worked, but sometimes took a couple of tries. But this trick only works if the cat wants the treat more than they don't want the pill. A dog can be tricked into thinking the pill is the treat. Flavored pill compounding is apparently also an option, but I've never tried it.

mschuster91 4mo ago

> Do yourself a favor, crush the pill and put it in food. This does not work on compounds sensitive to stomach acids. Some medications (both veterinarian and human) have to be specially coated to survive this environment [1], if you crush the pills the medication gets less effective, completely ineffective or, like ibuprofen, irritate the stomach. Or, worst case, the medication is designed for retarded release in the stomach acid - and now that you've crushed it, the entirety of the compound is dissolved in the stomach at once. Please always ask your veterinarian/physician, the pharmacy staff and always read the medication's application notes because particularly physicians often are unaware and the same ingredient on the prescription might be fulfilled by a crushable or a non-crushable variant which only the pharmacist knows. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magensaftresistente_Tablette https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magensaftresistente_Tablette

robocat 4mo ago
> like ibuprofen Your conclusion is based on your misunderstanding: perhaps take more care in future, and be especially careful if sharing your misinformation. After absorption into the bloodstream, ibuprofen indirectly reduces the prostaglandins that normally protect the stomach lining crushing ibuprofen can make local irritation more intense and quicker, but this is usually not the main driver of ulcers And sorry if the above is misleading, I'm no expert in this stuff either.
- ahartmetz 4mo ago
  To go further on this tangent, just mentioning it because it's rather useful: Studies show that vitamin C protects the stomach lining from stomach acid - unclear why exactly, but clear that it does. There are pills that combine the two, but you can also just buy some vitamin C and take it it with the pills. Like all water-soluble vitamins, you can't really overdose: the excess is excreted.
  - robocat 4mo ago
    And you've just done the same mistake? Taking too much vitamin C [acidic] can cause side effects, including: Upset stomach, vomiting and loose stools. Heartburn. Stomach cramps or bloating. https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements-vitamin-c/art-20363932 https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements-vitamin-c/art-2... I mean what you've said is interesting (albeit irrelevant to ibuprofen given the pathway).

dormento 4mo ago

> Do yourself a favor, crush the pill and put it in food. PROTIP never ever do this. The cat might just decide food is not worth having and develop liver and stomach issues. Bastards won't tell you anything is wrong, then they'll just crawl into a hole, as usual. Source: I had the same not-good, very very bad idea and almost killed mine once. Had to go for a feeding tube and all. If you must give you cat medicine in pill form, just use one of those silicone pill "siringes" with flexible tips (and give it some Churu or similar to train it to tolerate medicine better). Washable, no fuss, quick and easy.

euroderf 4mo ago
> then they'll just crawl into a hole, as usual. My wife's family's countryside ex-farm has a barn, and out in the barn we found... a mummified cat. By mummified I mean, desiccated, hairless, but much more than a mere skeleton. Damnedest thing.

atombender 4mo ago

You shouldn't do this, as others have said. Also, some medications must not be crushed at all. In my experience, the best way to give cats pills is a pill pocket, e.g. from Greenies [1]. The pocket is a hollow, soft cat treat. You put the pill inside the pocket, close it, and feed it to the cat. With some larger pills, you may have to split them up (if the medication allows). Some cats don't love the flavor, but you can use a sauce packet and coat it with some sauce. [1] https://www.greenies.com/collections/cat-pill-pockets https://www.greenies.com/collections/cat-pill-pockets