Hello pet parents, my name is Courtney and I'm with Central Texas Veterinary Specialty and Emergency Hospital. I'm in the Emergency and Critical Care Department and a common question or demonstration is how do I pill my cat?
My cat, Bug here, we're going to demonstrate with just little pieces of kibble, cause he's not currently on any medications and he's actually quite docile, so this may seem easier demonstrated than done.
So to start, you want to have your pet, your cat, someplace where they're comfortable, where you can access their face and mouth easily, and their instinct is going to be to back up. So oftentimes you want to actually come from behind them.
With my own animals that are medicated, the way that I will approach them is I'll actually grab, hand fully over their face or over the top of their head. I'll have the pill in the other finger with the index and thumb and I'll use my middle finger to actually open his bottom jaw. I'll drop that pill in as far back as possible. You can tell he's already licked his mouth and swallowed, but another key to actually get them to swallow, is to give them a quick puff of air on their nose and oftentimes that'll make them want to lick their nose and then therefore swallow the pill.
Give them some pets and some treats to make it a happy experience, again, because we don't want it to feel like torture and have them running away from you but try to make it as pleasant as possible.