How to Give a Cat a Pill

Last Friday night, the 6th of February, Thimble got his first pill.

Now I have lots of experience giving cats pills. Pippin had to have a pill every day for his entire life, since his diagnosis at the age of three with cardiomyopathy. I would give him the pill and then give him a treat. Since I forget about giving treats at random times, that was the only time he got treats. He would actually remind me if I forgot to give him his pill, although his reminders were along the lines of, "I would like my treat please. You forgot it. You can keep forgetting the pill part, though." (Never worked; you remind me of the one, I remember the other, too.)

Here's how I give a cat a pill, in this case, Thimble.

I put him on the litter box's box in the living room so he was in the corner between the window and the boxes of drawers at the side. Then I sat down on the box with my legs at an angle so I was in the way if he tried to leave.

If you have a more cranky cat than Thimble, you'll need to do more than that to confine your cat for the initial pill giving, but for a trusting kitten who has never been afraid or mistreated, this was fine.

Now a cat's mouth has those long sharp teeth at the corners called, funnily enough, canines. Right behind the canines there is a small gap in the teeth. If you push gently on this gap with your finger, it wedges the mouth open and is much, much easier than trying to pull a cat's mouth open from the front. It baffles me that most vets don't seem to know that cats have an "open button" for their mouths, although, granted, you can't open it as far as you can from the front, and since vets are trying to examine the teeth, perhaps that is why they do it the hard way.

So I take the pill in my right hand between my thumb and forefinger, and use my middle finger to press the "open button" on Thimble's mouth. The other hand is holding his head steady, just cupping the side of his head so he can't lean away from the pressure on his mouth. As soon as his mouth comes open, I drop the pill down his throat.

At the same time I'm opening his mouth, I'm also tilting his head back slightly to give gravity a chance at the pill as well. You can't tilt their head back completely vertical because it becomes difficult to swallow (you try it on yourself sometime), but an angle does help matters.

It's important, especially if the pill tastes bad, which this one does (I was told--I didn't try one), to attempt to get the first contact between pill and cat mouth to be behind the "hill" that the tongue makes. If you get it on the tongue, or against the back of the mouth on either side of the throat, then they have to move it around to get it into swallowing position, and that's harder (on both of you).

Once the pill is in Thimble's mouth, then I let his mouth close (all I have to do is take my finger out of the side) and try to keep it closed so he can't spit the pill out. Mostly this involves gently holding his chin up against the rest of his head (cats usually won't open their mouths by lifting the top of the head; they do it by dropping their jaw, so you don't have to worry about the other direction of opening, so to speak).

Stroking their throat from chin to chest stimulates swallowing. So does blowing on their nose. I'd always heard that and it never worked, but I finally figured out with Thimble what my problem was. You're not blowing a candle out. Instead it's a soft huff of air, rather as though you're letting them smell what you just had to eat. (You know, you've eaten something a cat would find interesting, like tuna, and you're on the couch petting the cat and all the sudden they get a whiff from your mouth and they plant their noses right at your lips, wanting you to breathe on them so they can smell it better? That kind of huff.)

And it really does make them swallow. Kind of cool, since the throat stroking doesn't always work.

A really clever cat can manage to not-swallow their pill throughout all this, but keep it tucked in their mouth like a squirrel with a nut and then spit it out later when you're not looking.

However, this is where the treats come in. Once you have the cat fairly calmed down and the pill theoretically swallowed, you give the cat treats. This both rewards them for putting up with the pill (no matter how badly they might have behaved--it's not a reward for good behavior, it's a reward for putting up with you shoving a pill down their throat) and it ensures that they swallow whatever was in their mouth ... just in case they were trying the spit-it-out-later trick.

Thimble was rather surprised at the first pill, and so didn't react. The second one, Saturday morning, went a little rougher, but he knew he was getting a treat afterwards, so he didn't protest as much as he could have.

Something I hadn't realized would also be a motivator ... Thimble was the only one getting treats. The other two were on the box with us, seeing what in the world I was doing that I was giving just Thimble a treat (or two). And Thimble quite enjoyed being the only one receiving goodies.

By Sunday night, he reminded me of his pill time, because he wanted the treats ... and the chance to say na-na-na-na-na to the others. This was actually really good because on Sunday night my on-again off-again sore throat was on in quite a severe way, and I had forgotten!

Thimble is quite used to taking his pills now, and will actually leap up on the box when I get the treat bag and pill bottle out of the drawer next to it, and wait for me to give it to him. He has also figured out that if he doesn't try to close his mouth but instead gives me half a second to actually line up the pill with the back of his throat, he won't taste it as much.

Because you see, for all that this sounds simple, it's really quite a challenge for me because of my clumsiness. Pippin, too, figured out that if he didn't try to rush things, it actually didn't take nearly as long.

Of course, then I got to see how Colby did ...