Giving Multiple Medications to Cats: How I Pill Allegra

Giving medications to a cat is rarely simple. Even though there are plenty of ways to approach this task and outwit even the most resistant of cats, the reality is that there are still some who simply won’t cooperate. And it’s one thing to have to give a cat one medication for a couple of weeks, but a whole other story when a cat is on multiple medications for the long term. In this article, I’m explaining how I handle this challenge with Allegra, along with some additional tips and tricks to help make the process go more smoothly.

Allegra is currently on six different medications. If she was human, she would need a pill sorter to keep track! I will preface the following with this: I’m incredibly fortunate that Allegra is easy to pill. Which baffles me even after 16 years, because she can be a bit of a bitey girl. She tends to nip both when she gets super excited, or when you do something to her that she’s not thrilled about. I’ve tried, but have never been able to cure her of that habit, so we just work around it.

Options for giving medications to cats

Before I go into our system, here are some tips that can make giving medication to cats easier:

• Hide the pill in food or a treat. I don’t recommend adding medication to your cat’s meal. Many medications have a bitter taste, and if your cat catches a whiff of that taste in her meal, in her mind that may turn what may have been her favorite food into something to be avoided at all costs in the future. Instead, get a special food that your cat doesn’t routinely eat and hide the pill in a small “meatball.” Alternately, purchase one of the many available treats or pastes designed especially for medicating cats. Mixing a medication with food may not be appropriate for all drugs, so check with your veterinarian before using this method.

• Pop the pill directly into your cat’s mouth.  If your cat is amenable to this approach, the best way to do this is place your non-dominant hand over the top of your cat’s head, with your fingers at the side of her mouth, and gently tilt her head back. With your dominant hand, gently pry her mouth open with your middle finger while holding the pill between your thumb and index finger, and pop the pill as far into the back of her mouth as you can. Always follow this with a moist treat or a bolus of water. Never dry pill a cat. Dry pilling can lead to dangerous esophageal erosions. Churu treats are great to use as “chasers.” Not only will they help the pill go all the way into the stomach, but your cat will associate being pilled with a treat.

• Use a pill gun. Pill guns may present less of a risk for you to get bitten in the process since you can use the pill gun to prey your cat’s mouth open and shoot the pill down the back of her throat. Make sure you follow with a wet treat or bolus of water.

Use empty gel caps

Even though Allegra lets me pop pills directly into her mouth, I doubt that she would still let me do it if I had to pop three or four pills in one at a time. Instead, I use empty gelatin capsules. This way, I can put all the meds she gets in the morning or afternoon in one capsule.

It’s quite a production to cut and allocate her pills, but it makes life so much easier. I previously wrote about a little trick to easily cut pills (spoiler: it’s not with a pill cutter!)

This is what the caps look like when they’re finished:

This approach has also been helpful when I traveled. Even though Allegra lets me pill her, I’m pretty sure she would not allow someone else to do that, and I want her to love our cat sitter, not shy away from her. The way I handled it was to have my cat sitter empty the contents of a gel cap onto a dish, mix it with a generous helping of nutritional yeast, and Allegra would lap it right up. That said, at this stage I’m no longer comfortable leaving her in the care of someone else, and I’ve suspended all travel for the time being. She’s finally stable, and I’m too afraid that changing up her routine will set us back.

If you can’t give medications despite everything

Having to medicate an uncooperative cat takes a tremendous emotional toll on the cat’s caregiver. And sometimes, you may have to decide to discontinue medication. To do so is a gut wrenching decision, because it will most likely shorten your cat’s life. But if giving medications destroys the bond between you and your cat, deciding to suspend treatment is a perfectly acceptable choice.

I feel blessed that Allegra is so easy to pill. Not all of my cats have been so cooperative. With Buckley, I had to make the difficult decision to stop her medications for restrictive cardiomyopathy, knowing full well that it would shorten her already much too short life even further. But I also knew it was the right decision for her, and for me. She lived for another month after I stopped her medications, and except for the last few days of her life, her quality of life was good. If anything, our bond became deeper, knowing that our time together was limited.

If your cat simply needs a round of antibiotics, it may be worth pushing through the stress of administering medications. But if you’re looking at a cat who needs medication multiple times a day long term and runs from her human every time she sees the pill bottle come out, you will need to start to consider quality of life – both your cat’s, and yours. But what you will gain by deciding to stop, in my opinion, far outweighs what you will loose. You will get the loving relationship with your cat back.