Sometimes Woozles can be a challenge, but nothing strikes fear in the heart of a pootie companion as a vet telling you that your pootie has to be medicated.
How can that sweet bundle of contentment who rests on your lap and purrs, who sleeps in the crook of your knees at night, turn into a horrifying bundle of fury and destruction when it's time to take a pill?
There are heroes that have climbed the tallest mountain, ventured into the deepest jungle, or survived in the arctic. But a true hero is one who pills their pootie day after day until the medication is finished.
Read on about this deadly adventure below the fold!
There is, of course, a wide range of behavior in Pootus Domesticatus when it come to pill taking.
There is the sweet, docile, laid back pootie. Nothing bothers them -- all one has to do is gently open their mouth, pop the pill in, and then give them a ‘scritchy’ in gratitude for their forbearance. (For some reason, these are the same pooties that allow you to snorggle them without biting your fingers and ripping the flesh off your hand with their back claws.)
There are, fortunately the purring piglet pooties who will take any medication as long as it is hidden in a copious amount of gushy food (lolspeak for wet food).
Other pooties require you to have a cunning plan to get them to take their medicine. For example, my dearest Hyla loved wet food, but perfected the art of eating around a pill that had been encased in chopped meat. If the pill was crushed and put in the wet food, she’d stare at it & then cry piteously that she was being starved.
Fortunately, Hyla was paranoid about her food. She’d sometimes growl at one of the other pooties while eating. This gave me an idea. I rolled a pill into a ball, put it in her dish, and just as she was checking it out, I’d start to pull the dish away. She’d bolt down the meat with its hidden pill without chewing. (I always did feel proud about that subterfuge.)
Finally - gasp! - the fluffy minions of death – pooties who refuse to compromise their bodily integrity by taking medicine. The pill will be sniffed out and avoided no matter how much wet food it’s hidden in.
Wet food with powdered pills are avoided. This obdurate pootie will starve for days if that is the only food offered. The human companion is distraught, not wanting the pootie to starve, gives in.
So finally, the direct assault is tried. Tragically for us, pooties have claws and know how to use them. Some pooties even have extra toes and claws which is really unfair.
So now, the sweet precious pootie is wrapped up in a towel like a feline burrito. She glares at you with a look that says "I hate you with the intensity of a thousand desert suns."
The BIG problem with this method is those sharp, penetrating canines of this peerless predator cannot be secured. And the pill has to go in the mouth. (Always wondered if there were pootie suppositories...)
You try to thread the needle, get the pill in past the teeth, over the tongue and down the throat. Meanwhile, darling kitty is screaming and yowling which adds to the stress of trying to give a pill. Oh the humanity!
Finally, the ordeal is over. You run cold water on your hands to staunch the bleeding from puncture wounds; apply rubbing alcohol and antiseptic gel to the myriad scratches, and pray to heaven that the pill, administered under truly horrific conditions isn’t found on the floor soon after. Meanwhile for the next 2-3 days your pootie hides from you compounding that feeling of utter guilt.
So let’s take a poll! Most of the posters here have more than one pootie, so they can take the poll based on the most compliant or least compliant pootie, or select an average of all current (or over the Rainbow Bridge) pooties.
Afterwards, let’s post in the comments section stories of our triumphs and defeats; share deceits and stratagems, and compliment ourselves for bravely tackling the challenge of "pilling the cat."