Tips for Giving Liquid Medication to Cats

You have to be careful about giving liquid medications to cats. My mom has to give her cat a liquid medication every day for the rest of his life & the vet told her to be extremely careful & don't force it on him. Apparently, their nostrils are so close to their mouths, that if you force it on them & they get some in their nose, they can aspirate it into their lungs & get pneumonia, which could kill them! I guess it can even happen if you force it down their throats & it goes down the wrong hole while they are struggling. Fortunately my mom's little devil is good enough to lick the spoon if she corners him in his bed & waits long enough!

I agree with poster AnnmacC. I've had to mix the liquid into their wet food because they don't like to be held down and made to swallow something against their will. My experience has been that, if I've tried the direct oral method, when I approach with the next dose, they know what I'm doing and run. Much easier to mix it with food and no stress for your cat. I've never heard of medication that cannot be mixed with food so hope this works!

We recently had to give our cat some liquid meds and we nearly gave up. Even with two of us holding her and wrapping her in a towel it didn't work. She'd go one way and the drops the other. I read somewhere (probably on Thrifty Fun) to try adding the drops to her food. It worked. Just put a small amount of canned food in a dish and add the drops, mash them together and that's it. I hope this works for you, because your cat obviously needs the meds and it can be worrying and stressful for both of you. Good luck and I hope kitty is better soon.

You can also try to stick the dropper as far down the cats throat as you can without hurting or choking them... then blow into the cats face, much like babies, it will force them to swallow.

Hold onto the cat with one hand and use a medicine dropper to place the medicine in the corner of it's mouth. When you place the dropper against its teeth in the corner of its mouth it will involuntarily open its mouth. Express the dropper and run your hand under its throat to get it to swallow. Though mostly they will anyway. Good luck.