Hi, I am Dr. Candy Olson at Greenbriar Animal Hospital. Were shooting video on tips for how to take care of your cat at home. This section is on how to give oral medication to your cat in a liquid form, and some options if youre having troubles with your regular pills. There are a couple of things here that help. First of all, most cats wont take medicine mixed into their food, unless its particularly yummy or a particular medication. So, if you are having troubles giving your cat medication, talk to your veterinarian, they can usually have the compounding pharmacy make it into a liquid to taste good, like a tuna flavored favorite liquid, or even a chewable treat, just another option for you. There are a couples of things here for the liquid. This is a standard medication with a dropper. This is oftentimes a little bit more comfortable for people to measure, but its a little tough to get an exact measurement, and were going to show you with little Maily here how to use the dropper, and how to give her the medication.

This is a little easier I find to use because its got exact measurements on it, and all you do with this is just pull it into the bottle, the dose for Maily is cc, right up to that 0.

5, and you didnt waste any, and youve got your liquid right here to give her. So, were actually going to give her this one first. The most important thing when youre giving liquid to a cat is you dont want to put the syringe or the dropper right in front. They dont like that, they have teeth right there, its uncomfortable, its like somebody sticking something right at your teeth. What you want to do instead is put it at the side of her mouth, right where the whiskers end. You can see shes got a nice little landmark there, the whiskers end right there. If you put something right there, there is a little gap in the teeth, shes not going to mind it. Theres two ways to do this. You can literally just put it in, theres a little gap right there and just squirt it in. Now, this particular medicine is flavored for cats, so she is like oh, okay, that wasnt so bad. If you have to give something nasty tasting, a lot of cats will salivate and drool almost like they got poisoned or something, its just because its nasty tasting. With the dropper what you want to do is mix it up. Now, were giving her the same amount, a half ml, it look like more in the dropper, because thats a half ml there. You do the same thing with the dropper, but its a little harder to get it in quickly. So, were just going to do this on the other side. You can see there are her whiskers, so were going to go right behind the whiskers, same kind of thing, were just going to squeeze it in there. But you can see -- Im looking at oh, gosh, there were a couple of drops left there. So, the disadvantage of the dropper is sometimes you have to do it twice. Also, if youre not holding it upright, you wont get it all out, so sometimes you waste it. Thats why we prefer the syringes because you know exactly how much you got. This medicine is also flavored for cats, but notice she didnt seem to like it as much either. Now, the honest thing may have been because she had to have two medicines. A lot of cats if they have to have two medicines will do better if you can combine them in one syringe, if theyre both liquids, rather than give them two separate doses. Its the number of times rather than the amount of medicine thats the big deal for kitties. So, those are some tips on how to give liquid medication for your cat. Next, were going to be going over how to do eyedrops and eye medication.