If using a medicine dropper, you don't have to pry the mouth open, just slide it in behind those teeth and aim toward the throat.
Also, a baby spoon used very gently and carefully is both safer for you and gentler on the cat to pry the mouth a bit open; I learned this trick when feeding chicken broth to a very sick and dehydrated cat (the cat showed up sick in the late afternoon on a weekend, and didn't seem to be on death's door, so my Mom instituted the forced feeding of homemade chicken broth first; when she got him to the vet on Monday morning, the vet was very impressed that the cat wasn't so dehydrated that he had to keep him overnight).
I'm thinking that I could, just as easily, put a pill on the spoon for this part of the process, slide the tip of the spoon in and rotate to get the mouth to open, then tilt upward to let the pill slide in, but one could practice the process with the cat's favorite cat food a couple of times, to let the cat know this isn't just a mean form of torture, before slipping the pill in.
Still, the medicating story I like best is when a doc prescribed cod liver oil for a cat; the pill process was dreadful with this cat, until the cat bit a capsule open, and it was discovered that the cat LOVED the flavor. (-: Pity that wouldn't work for most medicines!
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Date: 2009-03-07 07:53 pm (UTC)Also, a baby spoon used very gently and carefully is both safer for you and gentler on the cat to pry the mouth a bit open; I learned this trick when feeding chicken broth to a very sick and dehydrated cat (the cat showed up sick in the late afternoon on a weekend, and didn't seem to be on death's door, so my Mom instituted the forced feeding of homemade chicken broth first; when she got him to the vet on Monday morning, the vet was very impressed that the cat wasn't so dehydrated that he had to keep him overnight).
I'm thinking that I could, just as easily, put a pill on the spoon for this part of the process, slide the tip of the spoon in and rotate to get the mouth to open, then tilt upward to let the pill slide in, but one could practice the process with the cat's favorite cat food a couple of times, to let the cat know this isn't just a mean form of torture, before slipping the pill in.
Still, the medicating story I like best is when a doc prescribed cod liver oil for a cat; the pill process was dreadful with this cat, until the cat bit a capsule open, and it was discovered that the cat LOVED the flavor. (-: Pity that wouldn't work for most medicines!