Have you ever tried giving a cat a tablet? I have. It wasn’t pretty. Or easy. Or in any way fun.
We moved recently – see my blog “The perils of moving house”. This move involved a 180 mile, 3 hour drive. To add to the general disorder of packing and cleaning and organising and solicitors and estate agents and not being able to find any clean clothes…we had a cat. A really gorgeous cat. A cat that my husband got for me for my birthday 2 years ago. She’s called Crumble. Well, technically she’s called Mrs Badcrumble after Eddie Izzard’s clarinet teacher, but my husband said that was silly (I have NO idea why!) so we settled on Crumble.
So, prior to moving day, I sauntered over to the local vet’s, explained that kitty was going on a long journey, and asked what he thought the best plan was. He said to bring her down and he’d have a look at her, and providing she was fit and healthy, he could give her some magical tablets which would make her all chilled out and groovy. Fabulous.
Getting her down to the vets in the first place was an interesting manoeuvre. My cat does NOT like getting in her basket (because she knows it’ll mean a trip to the vet) and she definitely doesn’t like going in the car – for the exact same reason. She howled the whole way there, and the whole way back, and looked at me with mournful eyes while we waited at the vet’s. After some scratching and cowering, and a bid for freedom by hiding under the table (the cat that is, not the vet), she was pronounced fit to medicate. 86 pence later (yes, that IS correct – cheapest trip to the vet EVER!) we were pharmaceutically equipped…
So the day of moving approached. She was supposed to have three (oh yes, THREE!) tablets one hour before travel. Great. My friend Fi was fortunately around at the time and offered (well, was coerced into offering) some help. Tim caught the cat and held her, Fi managed to get the first tablet into Crumble’s mouth, and miraculously she swallowed it. Genius. However, she was now wise to our plan. The second time it took two people to hold her, which left the administration of the pills to me. She wouldn’t open her mouth. She squirmed. She wriggled. She tried to escape. She pretended to take the tablet and then spat it out again. I finally managed to get her to swallow it and then she was off again.
I decided that two tablets was probably the same as three, and I really didn’t think that I could go through the trauma of giving her another one. Over the next five minutes, she started looking a wee bit wobbly. Her back legs really weren’t behaving properly, and she was staggering about. So we popped her into the basket (she still managed to try and escape getting in there, despite being the cat equivalent of trollied), secured her in the car, and started wending our way to our new home.
Well, the trauma of the tablet-giving was worth it, because she slept the whole way there. I just hope we don’t decide to move again any time soon, because she hasn’t forgotten, she definitely hasn’t forgiven, and I don’t think I can go through the stress of giving her pills again!
