Cat Care - Giving Solid Medication

Hi, I am Dr. Candy Olson, owner of Greenbriar Animal Hospital, and were shooting video clips on how to take care of your cat. This particular one is how to give pills to your cat several different ways. This is Tuktak, he is going to help us out with the demonstration. We have a couple of different things here. This is a piller its a got a little soft tip on here where you can put the pill in, he is trying to swipe the pill treats here. You can tell theyre yummy for cat. You will put the pill in here, and then this little plunger will actually push the pill out. Since the tip is soft, you dont have to worry about how far you stick it back in their throat. So, for cats that arent cooperative about having their head handled, or you cant get them to cooperate, sometimes this will work well. These are some little pill treats. What you do is as you put the pill in, Im just going to show that, you take a little pill, and you sort of mould it all around here, just like that. So, sometimes cats will eat them and sometimes they wont, so what you would want to do with this, if youre using this for giving pills, is you want to give them a plain one first, make sure do they like it, will they eat it? Now, he probably will if we leave it there a little bit, he is just a little distracted. The other thing that you can do with pills is actually just take it and stuff it down him. Then what you do with the pill, the most important thing is the position of his head, what you want to do is The position of his head is important because a cats tongue is really mobile and if you dont get the pill right in the back of his throat, he will work it out and spit it out. So, you want to get it way in the back here, were just going to give him a minute to chaw down on that. So, what you will want to do with this is you want to gently turn his head right up, straight up and down, and then just drop it in the back of his throat. Now, he is a very cooperative kitty for that kind of thing, but you could see how he licked afterwards, when they lick like that, that means the pill went ahead and went down. The other thing that you can do, as I said, s you can put the pill in here, now he has already had his doses, so Im not actually going to put a pill in here, but we will pretend like there is one in there. Some cats if you hold them like that, they will start fussing, they dont like it, so what you can do is just gently hold the scruff like this, if youve got the pill in here, and if you just tease his mouth a little bit. You have to be patient here. See, then he opened his mouth, and you just slide it in there, and push it back. You dont use this to open the mouth, you just tease it a little bit, and eventually he will open, he is a very good kitty, arent you Tuktak? Now, this is one of the last things that you can do. This is a pill crusher. If your veterinarian has said that you can crush the medicine and mix it in with some wet food, then you use one of these. You put the pill, and it turns into powder, and you can mix it in with a little bit of wet food. That works very well for some medicines, but most medicines taste too nasty, and the cat wont eat them. So, thats how you give pills to cats. Were going to show you how to give liquid medication to cats in a few minutes.