Memes

I'm bigger than my cat. Stronger than him. Smarter than him. But giving him a pill is a test of sheer willpower, and in that I am completely outmatched.

It's like every cell in his body is repurposed into a perfect machine, the singular goal of which is not taking a pill. He becomes liquid when I try to hold him down, then instantly transforms into a spring-loaded pill shooter once I get his mouth open. One time, through incredible effort, I managed to do it without losing any blood. I watched the pill go down his throat. The next day I found it caked in his neck fluff, as though his body detected its presence and morphed around it, rejecting it at a cellular level.

He doesn't need a lot of pills, but after years of blissful cat ownership punctuated by epic, disastrous pill-giving, the vet finally revealed that he could take liquid medicine from a little dropper. So that's much better.

For anyone out there struggling with their cat during pill session:

• wrap it in a towel, like a cat burrito;
• hold the pill with your thumb and index fingers and use the middle one to open the corner of the cat's mouth;
• it'll open its mouth very briefly, during that time you'll have to aim and let the pill go towards the back side of its tongue, near its throat

If you do it right, it'll swallow the pill reflexively.

"Yees, yees, good nom, veery good nom, boiled chicken, mmm! Ignore the pill I stuck inside it, just eat it, yees! No! Nonono, don't spit it o-oh, god damn it..."