Hi guys,
So I need some help.
I have given pills and even administered insulin shots to my previous cats before but never a liquid oral medicine via syringe.
Poor Luca has giardia. He must have got it from the breeders house because has had diarrhea since I got him about three weeks ago. At first we thought it was the stress of a new home and then we had a little fiasco with some string and had to feed him all waterweed down dry food for him to pass it. Then we switched him to the food I will be feeding him now. So diarrhea was pretty much expected this entire during these changes. We took his stool in to the vet on Tuesday and it came back positive today for giardia.
I have just made my first attempt at his first does. He has to take it for five days.
I'm not even sure that I got half of his first does in his mouth (judging by the amount of it now on my hand, leg and carpet).

Does anyone have advise on how to get a kitten to take the medicine and swallow it?

What I tried was sitting on my way with my knees up and feet on the bed and I placed him on my thighs facing me while scruffing him. He seemed pretty relaxed that way, maybe a little concerned because I never hold him that way but overall cooperative. I could not get him to open his mouth AT ALL!!! I tried several didn't ways and he just wouldn't open up. So after the first failed attempt with some spillage I dried going on my the side of his mouth where he doesn't have much teeth let and giving him the medicine from the syringe that way. He of course immediately freaks out and I lose a good grip on him to keep facing me. I know he got a little bit on his mouth because he kept liking around his mouth for a while after. I'm only one person so it's hard to hold him out while trying to open his mouth while hold a syringe. My bf is away for the weekend so I'm on my own with this...not that my bf would be able to help much since Luca isn't that find of him and so I can't imagine my bf being able to holder him or give the medicine as Luca would freak out at him.
Any advise!?

Maybe scruff him with his back to you? Are you holding tight enough? Upsetting for you and him but he has to have his medicine poor thing I think down the side of the mouth is probably better as they don't have to open their jaws too much. An open mouth means a hand to scruff and a hand to open mouth and then no hand to use syringe! Also putting it to the back of the throat can activate gag reflex which is distressing for him. Vets need to give you extra meds to allow for it being spat out etc! You really can see the benefits of being an octopuss at this point Eight hands would be great!

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Melissa

UK
Oscar - Rescue (Rascal!!!) Bengal

Not the same med, but when we had to give Hendrix a liquid anti-inflammatory and used a syringe to measure the dose, we put a small amount of food in his bowl and squirted the dose on it, mixed it up a bit and waited until he ate that before giving him the rest of his meal. I guess it depends if he is able to have food at the same time as the med, which you could with the anti-inflammatory Hendrix had been prescribed.

I dread the day I have to pill one of ours or even syringe the med directly as these bengals are stubborn creatures and I'm sure an F1 is 100x more stubborn!

Good luck!

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Clare
Hendrix and Jagger, Brown Marble Boys (born 18 August 2013)
Hampshire, UK

Does it come in pill form? Liquid medicine is so hard to give to a cat. Pills are tough too but I use pill pockets and my little babies can't resist a treat even when a pill is inside.

Thanks for the advise guys. Round two went a little better but not great. I really hope that they do put in more dose than is required with anticipation that not all of it will be swallowed.
As bad as I feel for doing it this way, the most effective way I found was to wrap him in a towel like a baby so that he had less range of motion then to put him on his side and keep his head from twisting and turning my putting my palm down while using the thumb from that hand to pull his gum down than squirt. I found when he freaks out I can handle him better to put the rest in. I feel so bad doing it that way. A couple times He did break free of my grasp but o was surprised that every time he came back over to me like he was ready to play and I would just pick him up again and wrap him lol. I need to get better and getting it all in one attempt because the longer I drag it out the more stressful it will be for him. That said, he hasn't been very vocal at all during and of this and he is a very vocal cat (to say the least). By the end of it though he definitely has his tail between his legs. I think he has already forgot about it though! Three more days only hopefully. He may need to do the full ten but the vet said to start with five days. Crossing my fingers so some solid stool!!!

Oh yeah, wrapping them up in a cocoon works but it can still be hard on your own. After a couple of years of sub Q hydration, I had to wrap my cat in a towel in order to administer the fluids twice a week. She grew to dislike it so much that the last year and a half, I took her to the vet's office and had them give it to her. It's so hard sometimes…I wonder if Felaway would make them more docile and receptive.

Hmm, my cats had giardia as well when they were kittens, and I recall getting the medicine in tablet form.

Right now I'm actually having an amazingly easy time pilling Gaga for her seizure medication:

pull pill out of bottle
insert pill in small piece of turkey or chicken
give turkey to Gaga (which she pretty much swallows whole)

She actually looks forward to being pilled

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The little monsters 3

Lol! Glad it is working for you! Maybe they will be able to give me a pill form of I am unsuccessful with the syringe. My friend told me that if you blow in a cats face when you put the pill on there mouth that it forces them to swallow lol. Your way seems a lot simpler though

Emily, you're big and Luca is small. How is this a problem? LOL. Seriously, enlist the help of your partner in this. Four hands are a lot better than two when one is holding the cat and the other is trying to administer the medication. It's always helped when my husband was holding down the cat for me. Wrapping up in towels never worked for me. The cat would find a way to escape. I am so sorry you're having to go through this. Getting Luca was supposed to be a wonderful experience! And you're still dealing with issues. Poor baby. This isn't fun for him either. I'd always recommend getting medications in pill or shot form. Liquid is messy! Good luck.

It's harder than it looks hahahaha or at least, Luca is very flinchy and squirmy. Like 100x harder giving medicine to a kid. Plus, my bed was gone for the weekend(not that we would have been able to be much help with a cat he can't even get arms distance close to). But low and behold, after a lot of anguish, I decided to see what happens if I put it in his food and.... He doesn't even notice. He just eats up his food like nothing is new. All of this struggle and I could have just done that
I was afraid to do it that way at first because I didn't want to risk him not eating it then missing out on a dosage for him.

Still waiting for this medicine (panacur) to do its job though. After the first stage which was given at night, I saw some soft but more shaped stool when he went. It didn't smell as much as it usually does but there was a little blood in it. But now he is back to having practically explosive diarrhea when he goes and it's very runny and smelly again.and he passes a lot of has before he excretes his stool. He is also peeing outside of his box again sometimes too despite me cleaning it out three times a day. I can't blame him though; i wouldn't want to urinate in a box full of diarrhea either. Tomorrow is his last day on it but the vet said he might need to do the full ten days if there's no improvement with the five days they gave me.
Fingers crossed it goes away ASAP. I hate hearing him meow lIke that in the litter box and close his eyes like he's in pain when he goes.

I feel so bad for him- nothing has gone smoothly for him; from the flight fiasco being rebooked to be with me now. And i can tell he is starting to get frustrated and bored being confined to the bedroom still but I can't risk getting my other cat sick too. At least he isn't lathargic though. Still very much bouncing off the walls when we play and is very cuddly.

* boyfriend gone for the weekend...not bed lol

Big difference between "bed" and "boyfriend" Miss Emily! Ha ha ha! I had to give a one of my earlier strays a blue pill. I'd put it in the food and it would be gone! Raiden isn't like that. He nibbles his food and the pill was always still in the bowl, so I had to force feed them to him and that was fun! After I thought he'd swallowed it, I'd find it on the carpet the next time I was down there playing with him. In fact, I found two of them once. The stinker!!! I hope you get things cleared up soon so you can get Luca acquainted with your entire place and Avi. Poor baby!

Yes, its definitely easier to just put it on a bit of food - saves a lot of trauma for everyone! Hopefully it will now start to take effect, even if you do need to do it for another few days. Really hope you see some improvement soon and he can fully integrate into your home and with Avi.

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Clare
Hendrix and Jagger, Brown Marble Boys (born 18 August 2013)
Hampshire, UK

thanks everyone.
the following is going to be me venting so feel free to ignore.
well, i have to say I'm a little disenchanted with Luca's vet at the moment. The medicine hasn't really seemed to take effect. there was one day where his stools were thicker and more shaped but not solid, though he went a lot less. now he is back to his explosive diarrhea.
from my understanding, panacur is usually a 10 day affair. the vet however, only gave me 5 days to take home, saying to let them know how it goes. so today is his last day and there are still no drastic improvements so i called the vet to ask for more syringes for him. and they said he may need an extension on it but first i have to bring in another stool sample to have it tested for giardia again. this means dropping $75 AGAIN, and waiting 3-4 days AGAIN just to get the medicine for something that i know and that the vet knows he already has!!!!!
Am i being irrational or is that a money grab?? I mean, he has already tested positive for it less than a week ago. And more important than the dollar amount, my baby needs his medicine whats the point in stopping his medicine for 4 days just to put him back on it? i don't know how similar giardia is to human maladies, but usually when you stop medicine before completing the entire dosage and start up again, immunity to the medicine happens. Plus, poor Luca cannot be enjoying constant diarrhea. he even looks like he is in pain when he goes. he closes his eyes and cries
i just want him to have his medicine and be better.
i told my breeder about it and she said to try going to a farm supply store and getting the meds that way but I'm not sure about that plus i have no idea where i would find something like that in vancouver. i wish they would have just given me the full 10 days form the beginning.
anyways, I'm going to challenge giving the vet another stool sample but if they insist, i guess ill have to comply. either way, i want to pull my hair out right now!! i think this type of thing is characteristic of vets though. for instance; when i first got luca, i wanted to take him to a vet within the first couple days of having him, just to make sure everything was okay after his flight and all.even though he was inspected at the airport twice (once in the states, once in canada) before i could take him home. what would have been a $80 bill for an initial health exam turned out to be over $200 bill when i left. because of course they wanted to run blood tests. then when he swallowed a large piece of string they told me to bring him in immediately just to tell me to take him home and watch him...but of cours ei had to pay for another examination fee for them to tell me something they could have told me over the phone without seeing him. then when i took his stool sample in originally, it was supposed to be $50 but once again, of course they wanted to run other tests on it as well so i walked out of there paying $75. I am not a cheap person by any means ( i paid $4000 for this cat for darned sakes) but I'm not very happy with the vet right now.
it's tough because you want to do everything right for you pet but you also don't appreciate being taken advantage of! sort of puts you in between a rock and a hard place. though probably 10 times out of 10 you have to cave and just pay the money to take all precautions for your little fur baby.
sigh...anyone else experience anything like this with their vets?? maybe its a canadian thing ahhahaah

anyhoo, vent accomplished.

I think you need to put this into perspective a bit. If you do a little reading on the forum, you'll get a sense of what other people's experiences are with regards to "poo problems". But I think my summary would be:

* Poo problems are difficult to diagnose, and the tests are notoriously unreliable
* There may be multiple causes for a problem like this
* The medicines don't always get rid of the parasite completely on the first attempt
* The process of ridding your cat of the parasites can take months and be costly

So right now, I think what you've been through has not been very bad, nor costly, compared to many others in the forum over the past few years. I think the expectation that you'd march into the vet, run a test, get an accurate diagnoses, do one treatment, and get it solved, while it seems reasonable, is probably wildly optimistic. Stay the course, imo. Read more about this stuff, read some of the prior threads in the forum (especially those ones on TF) to get a feel for what others have been through.

If there are other reasons why you don't like your vet, then this isn't a bad time to switch, I'm all for switching away from bad vets sooner rather than later. But just make sure your expectations are not unreasonable about such things. And $75 vet bills, while they do add up, are nothing in the greater scheme of things.

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The little monsters 3