Pilling a cat

Hurrah! We've pilled Natalie, only three months til we have to do it again.

If you Google "pilling a cat" you get all these pages saying, "pull your cat's head back, open it's jaws, wedge a finger between the jaws, put the pill as far back as you can, close your cat's mouth, massage the neck and the cat will swallow the pill." Or "put the pill in your cat's food bowl, he'll gobble it up!", "coat the pill in butter and the cat will lick it off your hand!", "crush it up and put in some wet food, he'll gobble it up!", "wrap the pill in some chicken, and the cat will gobble it up!".

These people have seriously fucking stupid cats.

That works if your cat smokes a pound of something soporific every day, has no claws and no brain. It sort of works on Nathan, because a) he's a bit stupid and b) he's had more days of his life being pilled, than not.

His sister is a completely different story. She's clever, coating a pill in butter? That doesn't even work on Nathan! Crushing it up and sprinkling it on the food? she knows the food's been messed with, and she's taken to avoiding the food I put out specially for her with the granules pre-sprinkled. She's not keen on food, and doesn't even like wet food. As I've said, this cat FIGHTS. She growls, she squirms, she scratches, she bites. It's scary, it's upsetting and we don't want to do that to her. But she has to be wormed. So this is what we did.

You will need two people. Get a large floor cushion and lay a blanket/rug/towel over it. Chase the cat around the room and then pick it up. Place cat on blanket and hold it down, paws down so it's in a sphinx position; scruffing helps here. Wrap cat up in the blanket, much as you might swaddle a baby, taking care to cover the front paws. We did it so that the person holding the cat, kind of "sat" on the back of it and pulled the head up, making sure to apply pressure across the front of the cat, cat pinned betwixt the thighs. The cat will be growling, miaowing, and in our case, may jump out of the blanket. This took about six goes before we had a swallow.
Continuing, get the cat's head up, get the jaws open, stick the pill in, clamp the mouth shut and rub the neck.

At this point, you release the cat and it spits the pill out.

Rinse and repeat, realise you should get the mouth open using the blunt teeth at the front, thus avoiding piercing your fingers on the canines and giving the cat a little bloody drink.

Success will finally come, after much sweating, fear of breaking said cat, growling, hissing and some scratching.

No worms here though, phew.