April 15th, 2025

How would you like an update on sweet, baby Brysco?  This is him looking pretty dang healthy if you ask me.

It was a long, sometimes scary, expensive and difficult road to get here but worth both surgeries, the money, the recoveries, the sleepless nights, the worry, the numerous vet appointments, the medications and specialty foods.  Absolutely positively do not regret any of it.  He is in a pretty good place right now and back to being the silly, energetic, fun, very sweet and loving cat that we first adopted a year and a half ago!  

Obviously we have to keep a close eye on him, make sure he doesn't go backwards. That would be awful. It took so much time and work and effort (on everyone's part including his) to get him healthy again, I would hate to see him regress.  

Right now the biggest part of keeping him healthy is medication.    He is down to only needing it every other day now and you would think that was very do-able.    Just one eensy tiny little itty bitty pill every other day. Nobody would blame you for thinking that.  But you would still be wrong.

 Have you ever attempted to give a cat a pill?   The difficulty level is right about on par with disarming a bomb or attempting a reverse 4 /12 somersault dive.  Think Bull Riding mixed with Coal Mining and add in a cranky Panther.  Something along that line, except you actually are quite fond of the cranky Panther and don't want to hurt him in anyway.

I will attempt to describe how it goes in case you have never done this yourself. First you must find the cranky Panther, excuse me, the cat.  In my case, with two nearly identical black cats, we must find the Correct cat.  The one who needs the medication, not the one who doesn't.    Somehow he always knows when it's medication time. Even if I've gone nowhere near where the medication is kept, even if I haven't even whispered the word pill or medicine or anything like it. I didn't even Think it hard but he always knows. Somehow, he just knows.

Brysco like to hide in dark places. Black cats in the dark, very sneaky and very smart.  If his eyes are closed, his is virtually invisible.   He hides in the backs of closets and under beds in the farthest, most difficult to reach corners possible.  Of course he does.  I suppose I could snatch him from those hidey holes but I don't.  It's too traumatic for me and for him.  Instead I wait.  Eventually he will emerge. He will relax and think I've forgotten about it.  He will lay in a sunny spot and stretch out looking quite pleased with  himself.  And that is when I pounce.

Well I don't pounce.  I'm not a good pouncer.  But I quietly approach with the pill in one hand and the other hand ready to scruff him.  Scruffing is grabbing the cat by that extra fur at the back of the neck, much like a Mama cat does. It does not hurt them at all but it usually (Usually) renders them very compliant.   In a perfect world, the cat is scruffed with say, your left hand  and with your right hand you put a small amount of pressure at the back of the cats jaw to force it open just a little bit, with your third hand (?) you pop the pill into their mouth and, while holding the mouth closed, you massage their throat until they swallow and taadaa mission accomplished.

It didn't work like that at all.  I did approach quietly while he was relaxed in the sun.  I did scruff him, but he did not relax into compliance. Instead he shifted over into survival-I-am-being- attacked mode.  A secret kitty button was pressed and all twenty claws popped out to play. I once heard a fellow refer to those as murder mittens.  Sounds kind of cute yet dangerous.   Yup that's accurate. Murder mittens.  

To be completely fair, my hands are not very strong anymore so I don't know how tightly I was really scruffing him. Severe Arthritis has rendered my hands far less useful than I actually require much of the time. But I always have the plan to do the best I can with what I've got and at this point, I am fully committed.  I knew that I could release him knowing that he would then scurry back into his hiding place and be extra leery of my existence for a while  OR I could move forward which is what I did.

Meanwhile, he has, telepathically I think, communicated to his brother that the humans were killing him or at least torturing him and Wyatt has now run into the room to rescue him and is getting in the way, trying to stop me from doing whatever the heck it is I am doing to his brother. Very loyal and sweet but not helpful at all.

I attempted to avoid the wildly flailing claws while literally holding him now in midair. He gyrated, hissing and growling, swinging those scimitars of death at me and I stepped into it, got closer, hugged him to me to hold him more in place.  Somehow, miraculously, I did manage to shove the pill into his mouth.  I could tell when he swallowed because his body went limp. But his eyes. Oh those eyes.  They were open as wide as they possibly could and he starred at me with absolute shock.  How on earth could I have betrayed him like this?  I was a traitor, I was now the enemy and I would pay dearly.    Sounds about right.  I gently put him back on the window sill and as soon as I let go, he took off like he was fired out of a cannon.  Back into a safe hiding place to glare at me for the rest of the day while I applied bandaids strategically here and there.

It was awful.  I hated doing it to him.  He hated me doing it to him too.  There had to be a better way.  I could not bear the idea of this being our life every other day for the remainder of his life.

I watched several extremely unhelpful videos of people giving cats pills. And in each video the example cat was so easy going, cooperative and downright helpful that it didn't apply to our situation at all. But I went ahead and tried several different suggested methods.

 The burrito method (or purrito as they adorably referred to it) only works if it's a cat that will allow you to wrap it in a blanket. Brsyco will not.  He was out of that blanket faster than Houdini.

Another one was to put the pill on a washcloth, put some liquid cat treat (we refer to them as lickysticks in our house and both of the boys love them) on top of it.  The washcloth is suppose to hold the pill in place so that kitty licks don't push it across the plate/bowl or floor.  Instead, Brysco licked every bit of treat off the pill and then walked away leaving the naked pill behind.

Making a very tiny kitty meatball with the pill at the center of wet kitty food.  Other than the grossosity of handling wet kitty food in that manner,  this actually worked at first.  I made a very tiny kittyfood meatball with a medication middle and put it in his dish.  He leaned forward and gobbled it up quickly then I put the rest of the food in his dish and he was none the wiser.  I thought, Jackpot!  We've finally hit on the way that works.  Until the day shortly thereafter when he ate around the pill. Dang.

I tried getting super sneaky and making multiple kitty meatballs, making sure one had the pill. Of course he didn't know which one did,  hehhehheh, medication roulette I gleefully thought to myself. I completely underestimated how strong a cats sense of smell is  doggone it.  He would eat the two unmedicated meatballs and walk away in triumph. Ratz.

Sometimes I thought he was eating the pill but I would find it somewhere later in the day, slightly soggy and beginning to disintegrate. Obviously he had walked way, me thinking he had taken the pill but when I wasn't looking, he spit it out. Such a smarty britches!

In desperation I tried grinding the pill into a very fine powder and mixing it into his wet food.  It did work a little bit sometimes. He never ate the entire bowl of food when I did that, but he ate some. The issue here is that I had no idea how much medication he was actually getting. 

Which lead to a far bigger issue was that I could see, literally see, that he was beginning to fail a bit once again, right before our eyes from receiving sporadic and uneven amounts of medication instead of the nice steady equal distribution he needed.  Dang it all.

Tim told me about transdermal application of medication.  Transdermal application is medication in ointment form which is applied to the skin and absorbed into the body.  That sounded like a great plan.  I called the vet to discuss it and they were onboard.  They ordered it and it arrived last week.   I approached it with great hope.

It has to be applied to the inside of his ear, alternating ears with each application.  It's applied and rubbed in and that's it!  Sounds super easy yes?  Well I will say this, it is getting easier with each application rather than harder which was how it went with the pills. At this point, he thinks he's just getting pets instead of medication.  

Once again, I  approach him only when he is already relaxed and snoozy.  First he gets lots of pets, which he adores, then the medication ear massage, then more pets and all is good.  Tim helped the first few times and we are learning the tricks of the trade so to speak, as we go.

And we are seeing such a wonderful difference.  He is more consistently playful, funny, silly, energetic and loving.  He spends more time each day awake and engaged.  Best of all, he is starting to put on a pound or two which was seriously needed.

I think finally, FINALLY, we have the medication method that works for us and for him and Brysco is on his way to the rest of a very healthy happy life!