{"id":2467,"date":"2017-05-05T10:42:52","date_gmt":"2017-05-05T14:42:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.timeoff.org\/rick\/?p=2467"},"modified":"2021-01-29T15:52:36","modified_gmt":"2021-01-29T20:52:36","slug":"drugging-my-cat-an-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.timeoff.org\/rick\/2017\/05\/05\/drugging-my-cat-an-update\/","title":{"rendered":"Drugging My Cat – An Update"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It’s been more than three-quarters of a year since I wrote about medicating one of our resident felines<\/a>. Yes, Wiley’s done well and continues act like his old self – thanks for asking! His weight’s dropped about a quarter pound from a year ago. Our vet raised an eyebrow at that change, “cats his age usually gain and gain,” but I think it’s because he’s much more relaxed. That, and the two-year-old almost-kitten gives him a run for his money. Wiley recently turned ten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, I ran into a situation the other day that calls for some comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was time to renew Wiley’s prescription. I buy a 30-tablet bottle – the quarter-tablet doses last 120 days. But when I cracked the seal something was different: these tablets were noticeably smaller and lacked the usual blue coating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I first checked the veterinarian’s label. It was correct. I needed to see the manufacturer’s label beneath. Over-labels are notoriously difficult to remove, I suppose to prevent abuse, but with patience I was able to peel back label to see what I needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I learned that the origin of this latest bottle was India and not the usual Israel. (The cost was $2.10 less, too.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The label told me that per-tablet dose hadn’t changed. But the tablet mass was clearly different. Now I needed to re-weigh and re-calculate my capsule fills. Here’s where it got weird.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I won’t bore you with the 30-tablet list, but the variance between tablets quickly became clear. The smallest and largest measurements were 0.099 g and 0.107 g! Tablets from Israel were way<\/em> more consistent, tablet-to-tablet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The average worked out to 0.1023 g, yielding a quarter-tablet dose of 0.0256 g. This would be near the lower end of the capabilities of my scale: 20 grams with milligram resolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m pleased to report that my first 12-day compounding run worked out perfectly. Finished capsules are less full than usual, naturally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I’ll still be bringing my feedback to the vet with my next refill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wiley’s only been using the new batch for a few days now so it’s too early to tell if this change will have any effect on him. It should not, but you never know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been more than three-quarters of a year since I wrote about medicating one of our resident felines. Yes, Wiley’s done well and continues act like his old self – thanks for asking! His weight’s dropped about a quarter pound from a year ago. Our vet raised an eyebrow at that change, “cats his age … Continue reading Drugging My Cat – An Update<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[106,105,75,36],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.timeoff.org\/rick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.timeoff.org\/rick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.timeoff.org\/rick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.timeoff.org\/rick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.timeoff.org\/rick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.timeoff.org\/rick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.timeoff.org\/rick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.timeoff.org\/rick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.timeoff.org\/rick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}