Cat Won’t Take Pill or Pill Pocket? Only 1 Way Worked for Me

I’d previously written an article on how to give cats liquid or solid medicine, but that was long before I had my own poor sick kitty who needed me to give him not just one type of medication, but two.

The first type was easy-peasy. It came straight from the vet, and I would just crack it into halves, then drop the half he needed at each meal with his food and he’d gobble de goop it up. No worries.

The second type. Hell. On. Earth.

Not just for him – for me, too, and not just because I couldn’t get him to eat it. Because this one time we tried to get him to eat it and he was trying to do it, he started foaming at the mouth because of how acidic it was.

Luckily, the vet had previously warned me this would happen, otherwise I would have thought he was really, really not okay and terribly ill from the medication. But the vet said this would happen because it was medication made for humans (we had to pick it up from a regular pharmacy) and that it was bitter inside, and because we had to give him a quarter of it, once the inside was exposed because we’d cut it into parts, the flavour wouldn’t be masked by the outside coating on the sides we’d cut into.

It was awful. I tried everything, from trying to coat it in petroleum jelly – which he loves – to trying to hide it in a pill pocket we DIYed – which he’d eat around and it just wouldn’t go down, so we didn’t even bother to try real pill pockets, which he would have done the same with.

And while most cats are calm and you can do that pretty epic trick of throwing the pill at the back of their throat to get them to swallow it – Athos was not having it. And I was also concerned with the foaming if we ended up having the pill touch his tongue anyway, so it was just all deeply concerning.

Then I had an idea.

No you cannot give cats butter or cheese or anything like that. That’s because they’re lactose intolerant. So I grabbed some lactose free butter from the grocery store (I need this for myself anyways, I am lactose intolerant and it is a god send!), then got to work and stumbled on the one way to get him to swallow his basically toxic pill without much coaxing on my part and without much failure rate (though I would absolutely watch him to make sure he’d eaten it, and eaten all of it!).

That was: to make lactose-free butter balls, around the pills.

I would take some butter, put it beneath the pill, place the pill in the middle, then mold the butter around it so that there was basically this cute little easy-to-swallow whole butter ball with a pill in the middle.

Then, because butter melts super easily when you try to do that kind of thing, even if you try not to use your fingers, I’d pop it in the fridge to harden up.

I started making 4 of these at a time, so I didn’t have to make them individually each time and wait for them to harden.

When it was time to feed him, he’d lick the butter ball and would normally get the whole thing in his mouth and swallowed all in one go, especially if I put some of his favourite kibble, then placed the butter ball on top so he’d gobble de goop it all up in one go. To make things more enticing, I’d also sprinkle some Purina Fortiflora Probiotics for Cats on top because he loved the taste of that. Sweet!

Sometimes it would melt a bit and he’d get the butter around the pill, so I made sure that he got the whole thing down, but usually, it was super easy going and I just had to be careful to make sure that none of the sides of the pill that were super bitter tasting were exposed or became exposed while he was licking the butter balls.

Give this a go if you absolutely can’t get your cat to take a pill – even a bitter pill like my cat Athos had to take.

ABSOLUTLEY 100% USE LACTOSE FREE MILK. And try to find salt-free butter as well. You don’t want your cat to have a plethora of digestive issues from you doing this.

Then let me know how it goes, cause I’m super curious to know if it works for you too!

Your Turn: Thoughts on Cats That Won’t Take Pills?

Have you ever had a cat who wouldn’t take a pill? Ever figured out a way to make it work?

What type of things did you try? What ended up working in the end?

Would love to hear your thoughts and stories on this topic in the comments section down below!