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How I medicated the hardest to medicate cat in North America

Tashi came to me at about 6 months old, a confirmed lover of dry kibble type food, which isn't real useful for absorbing liquid medication or masking it's heinous taste very well, but when I tried stirring her medicine into a nice high-quality wet food, she turned her nose up at it.  I had to find another delivery method, and fast.

I had noticed that on earlier attempts to switch her to quality wet food, she would lick all the liquid out and then just leave the rest or least most of it for hours... longer than I'd want refrigerated medicine to just sit around, put it that way.  This is an important key to success though - to notice things your cat tends to do and work with those natural tendencies.

		Here I'm pressing the back of a spoon into a highly addictive lower quality canned food to extract the liquid.  This particular food is so highly addictive, I don't recommend it for any other purpose than delivering medicines.  Hint: It's a really small can and it's especially designed for finicky cats.
		Here I've injected the dose of medicine.  Notice that I have NOT stirred it in.  Stirring it in only seems to make the entire thing taste terrible, so if you're cat is turning it's nose up at medicine in food try to isolate the bad taste by not stirring it in.
		Here I'm crumbling a couple of soft treats over the medicine.  I've found that surrounding a small bad taste with a lot of things your cat likes the taste of helps a lot.  Tashi is not a big nor eager eater so this was a significant finding for me as I only have a small daily appetite to work with each day that I have to make the most of.
		Here I've added a few pieces of her favorite dry kibble food to give a familiar smell to the mixture.  Even when Tashi must hit the concentrated medicine taste, the other good tastes are so close by that surprisingly, she just keeps going right through it.

We went from 3 hour ordeals to 3 minute walks in the park getting her meds into her system.  Heaven!

NOTE: Put the medicine into the smallest amount of liquid from the can as you can get away with as the richness of it can cause slight diarrhea, possible gastrointestinal distress for your cat and most probably feline flatulence!

After her morning medicine I allow free access to the left over canned food and a bowl of her favorite dry kibble food for a few hours.  After that I put it on the counter until after her evening dose of medicine.  After her evening dose, she has free access to foods until bedtime and then I put it up on the counter again.  Because she was underweight when I got her from the shelter, she was used to free access to her food, but I have found this slight restriction works well for us.  If your cat is not underweight, I don't recommend free access normally but after medicine doses, it's a much deserved reward and gives her a chance to eat what she pleases.

Besides the obvious health concerns with the clumping agent, these kinds of litters have harmful silica dust that your cat and you inhale that damages breathing surfaces permanently and is also a known carcinogen.  Several years before I educated myself on this matter, I had a cat die from the effects of clumping litter in her system and it was a slow and painful death that I will feel guilty about for the rest of my life.  As if all of that wasn't bad enough, clay mines are not eco-friendly either.  I really have nothing good to say about clay litters, and most especially about clumping clay litters.  You can bet they're not great for your plumbing either!  Think about it.

My veterinarian was NO help whatsoever with figuring out this problem, so don't expect yours to be!  Don't put yourself through the guilt or your cat through the pain.  What seems like common sense in hindsight was something nobody figured out at the time, and so many cats are suffering needlessly while the makers of these products count their blood money and insist their customers are perfectly happy injuring and killing their beloved pets with their convenient product.  Educate yourself and learn the TRUTH!

The shelter I got Tashi from was using a pine wood litter so I got the same thing to ease her transition and I'm so glad I did.  It's amazing.  There is NO unpleasant scent whatsoever!  Not right away and not two, three or even four weeks later.  After a month I change Tashi's litter, even though I can literally pick up her litter box and sniff it and still detect no scent at all.  By then the pellets are mostly saw dust and that's when it's time to replace them.  I do remove solid waste right away, and a little saw dust usually sticks to that, but it's perfectly safe to flush small amounts of saw dust.  When I dump out the litter into a big green garbage bag, I place the pan in the tub and pour boiling water all around the sides and into it and let it sit for a while.  Then I dump the water down the toilet and dry the pan with a paper towel.  Because I'm using soft wood instead of hard silica, the pan stays in perfect non-scratched condition so it's easy to keep it hygienic.  It always looks brand new to be honest.

Pine litter is environmentally friendly and 100% natural and safe to use.  It's so long lasting, controls odors perfectly and is affordable.  It has no dust during use or while cleaning and replacing for you or your cat to inhale.  It doesn't stick to your cat or track all over the house.  I never thought a litter would come along as perfect as pine litter.  Even the most finicky nose can not even detect it's presence in the home and I dare you to say that about any other litter product with a straight face!

If much-loved cats eating grocery store food (don't get me started) and living indoors safe are lucky, surely when you add this litter and a quality food only available from your vet and custom prescribed for your cat to the mix, you've got one of the luckiest cats in the world.  Doesn't your cat deserve to be that lucky?

Messing with the litter a cat is used to can be problematic, so if you want to switch to pine litter, put an inch of it underneath a layer of your current product without stirring and slowly reduce your current product until nothing is left but the pine pellets.  If your cat has any setbacks, simply slow down the process.  Keywords I dislike: clumping, silica, pearls, crystals, bentonite.  Keywords I like: natural, biodegradable, flushable and/or compostable.

Another option would be to toilet train your cat.  Some say it's not natural and no cat would ever do such a thing willingly.  NOT TRUE!  When I was growing up, we had a cat that taught himself to use the toilet, so don't let someone with an agenda (or maybe just jealous?) tell you what's normal and natural and what isn't.  If your cat doesn't want to learn toilet training, trust me, it won't.  Cats do not humor us with stupid pet tricks.  They leave that sort of thing to dogs and humans.