Imperial Star Wiley Raz-Ma-Taz, our flame-point Siamese, was born April 21, 2007. I think he’s had a pretty good life so far but, poor guy, he’s been having some trouble coping lately. Maybe he’s been watching the news too much… Whatever, we set out to help him.
I won’t bore you with the details. But over the course of a month or so working with a local veterinarian we settled on a successful drug regimen. The miracle drug? Fluoxetine, better known as Prozac. Yeah, this is an off-label use of the drug. I’ve since learned that it’s more common than one might think.
Wiley’s always been an easy cat to pill. Maybe it’s a trust thing. Sometimes he appears to look forward to his next dose, perhaps he somehow knows that it brings comfort.
Unfortunately his dosage requires that the 10 milligram tablet be quartered. That breaches the coating and that means it tastes awful! It’s bitter (self-tested) as all get-out. Mixed with saliva from an angry cat it foams and dribbles and… well, you get the idea.
Never underestimate the fury of an unhappy feline – especially when you’re working near its mouth!
Medication time quickly turned into a nightmare to which none of us looked forward. Even though the drugs helped Wiley this was putting a serious hurt on our relationship!
Pam found a place in China to buy unfilled gel-caps online and ordered some.
The quartered tablet fragments fit pretty well into the gel-caps. Life started to improve. Still, the quartering process troubled me. No matter how careful, no matter how sharp the razor blade, the size of the quarters varied and sometimes even became damaged beyond being useful.
Imprecise dosage and waste: there were still two problems to solve!
Back to Amazon… And in a couple of days I had what I needed:
* Updated April 11, 2021 – This scale has gone out of stock but the Amazon recommendation engine will happily point you toward an equivalent.
I had a few tablets on hand because I had just stocked up so I began by weighing each of them. There was a slight variation – just a couple of milligrams. I averaged the weights and divided the result by four – my quarter-tablet goal. Then I went to work.
The final result? Worth every nickel of cost and every moment of work!
That the evil, bitter taste is now gone is a clear win. And I’m convinced that consistent, accurate dosing is exactly what Wiley needs. He’s back to his old self! Our relationship is back on track, too.
This was definitely an extremely joyous read and thank you for inviting me to learn about your babies. It really warmed my heart and makes us even prouder to service amazing Pet Parents that put so much care, love, and devotion into their fur buds. Its why we do what we do.
Bra’la B.
Customer Service
Chewy
Glad you stopped in for a read, Bra’la!
What a devoted cat person you are Rick. Hat’s off!
Thanks for the props, Peggy. Pam and I have been keeping cats since the 70s and it’s just what we do. Seems kind of unbelievable, but this is the first time we’ve had a need to handle drugs in this way.
The purpose of the post was to show how easily and inexpensively one can handle a problem like Wiley’s. We struggled for a while. The ‘net was helpful, but nowhere did I see an article quite like this one. So I wrote it.
Again, thanks for taking the time to write!
I sent this to my daughters, who are bot Mom’s to my grandkitties. The youngest already responded that she is saving it for “just in case”. Thanks fore sharing it.