Feline victories

Life is made up of small victories. I now have one of these in the cat medication department. After months of trying to give our elderly female cat thyroid pills, and failing, I found a solution. Literally. The solution is to have the medication ground up in a fish paste solution, and then drip it carefully--not too much--on each cat kibble piece. This sounds tedious, but it's significantly better than the previous efforts.

These efforts involved trying to get her to swallow the pill. Let's just say that for an indoor cat she has very sharp claws. Then we tried grinding up the pill ourselves and hiding the pill dust in cream, ice cream, chicken soup, anything. She would eat the delicacies, and leave the pill crumbs. Then I tried giving her the fish paste by itself, heating it up a little to release the irresitable eau de haddock. She would look at me and laugh, in her funny cat way. She's smart, for an old broad.

The fish paste mechanism costs $60 a bottle, and she will go through a bottle a month for what I hope is a long life. The vet warned us, menacingly, that if we didn't do something, she would die. And indeed, she was down to about five pouds, with a ratty looking coat. Now she's sleek, and while not precisely fat, she no longer looks like a cartoon alley cat.

It's worth it. She's a good cat. And, I'd probably do something foolish with that extra $60 a month, anyway.