I have two cats, one is mine and the other is my girlfriends. My cat, although he isn’t thrilled with getting the occasional “tummy pill,” does do pretty well with them and doesn’t usually throw too bad of a fit. My girlfriend’s cat on the other hand, is quite the opposite. That little bugger will throw one of the biggest fits you ever seen when you attempt to give him a pill. You would think that we are trying to give him a bath he throws such a fit, which is another story all together!

Anyhow, we bought some of these “pill hiding treats” in an attempt to get him to take his medicine without the daily fight that is usually attached to the act of pill taking. The very first time we tried them we were both a bit apprehensive wondering if we had just wasted some money on treats instead of the normal band-aids which come in quite handy at pill time. Needless to say, these “pill pockets” worked!

We were literally amazed the first time that we gave him one with a pill in it and he actually gulped it down without even tasting it. Oh, what joy swept through our household. Little did we know that it was only going to last about 2 weeks. Just enough time for use to become complacent as far as the daily pill act was concerned.

Sure enough, we were once again outsmarted by the cat. Approximately two weeks into the “pill hiding treat” debacle, we started finding his pill on the floor but no sign of the pill pocket. We soon discovered that the little bugger was chewing the pill pocket off from around the pill and eating it without eating the pill.

Now we give him several “pill hiding treats” throughout the day, and only one of them has the pill in it, but he never knows which one it is. Although we never put it in the very first one, or the very last one. This has been working now for about a month, but I figure were running out of time on this one and had better start thinking up a new plan of attack before we are once again outsmarted by the cat.

Shawn Kovacich
100{9566c0a8c38d7ef68d82188668983429d8c3d2118cd02557d3ef814309ae7d10} Cat Lover

I have three older cats who take arthritis pills. One also takes a thyroid pill. I decided to try the pill pockets. For the first month or so, they all loved them, and they made it easy to give the pills. However, after three months:

One cat still loves them. I have to watch her carefully or she will steal the pills from the others.

One cat has figured out how to eat around the pill.

One cat sometimes takes them, but at other times just sniffs the pocket and skips it.

I have figured out a few tricks that help:

There are two types of pockets for cats: chicken and salmon. The chicken is slightly larger and more pliable and works better with larger pills. However, I think that the cats find the salmon tastier.

Get another cat treat and stick it to the side of the pill pocket. Then place the pocket so the treat faces down. My finicky cat is much more likely to eat the whole thing that way.

The pill pocket still helps with the cat who eats around it. After she eats the pill pocket, it is easier to shove the pill down her throat. She is more likely to swallow it instead of spitting it out if it tastes of pill pocket.

If you have two pills, try to fit them both in one pocket. Giving the cat fewer pockets will make it seem more of a treat.

So glad I got these. My cat is on a motility agent and I dreaded giving him the pills remembering the nightmare it was last year when I had to give him antibiotics for a month. With these it’s no sweat. He gobbles it up. So much so that he begs for them. Today I got home and he’d managed to get the whole bag off the shelf he normally doesn’t reach and tore up the bag and ate them all (more than 30 of them were left). I cringed at the thought of what would have happened if I’d decided to prefill the pockets with the meds. It would have been a tragedy – he would have overdosed and died. Thank goodness I had the instinct not to do that. So word of advice is do never prefill the treats in bulk. No matter how safe you think your storage place is.