Curmudgeon cat is in his last week [one hopes] of pills and shots for flea allergy. I've never really had any trouble giving pills to cats, in part because I use the Yummy Food technique.
So, what is this magic procedure? you ask. It's very simple, I say.
- Announce that it is pill time. What? Your cats don't come running when you tell them that you are about to shove horse pills down their throats? You're doing it wrong.
- Get the can of Yummy Food out of the refigerator and set it next to the cat's food bowl.
- Grab the cat's head, pull back gently [just until the lower jaw drops open], put the pill on the back of the tongue [far enough back that the cat can't spit it out, but not so far that you shove the pill down the airway].
- Immediately plop a spoonful of Yummy Food into the cat's food bowl.
- Go around the house, distributing Yummy Food into all the other pets' bowls too. This is an important step. Leaving it out creates resentment in the household.
- Put the food and pills away until next time.
This works best if your cat is a Glutton Cat, but will work for almost all cats [dogs, horses, gerbils, goldfish... ]
So what constitutes Yummy Food? Only your cat [dog, hamster, goldfish, horse... ] can tell you, but for best results it should be something that your animal companion doesn't get as a regular part of its diet. Gotta be something special. Around here, that usually means the smellier the better. Last week it was Kozy Kitten canned fish dinner. This week it's Green Cow canned beef tripe.
Green Cow is everybody's very favorite around here [not me, but I don't count], and they all, even the little wild heathens who won't let me touch me them at any other time, follow me through the house like I'm the Pied Piper, the cat's whiskers, the Goddess of Yummy Food, when I bring out this stuff.
That's me, Goddess of Tripe.
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8 comments:
"Goddess of Tripe" would be a funny name for a blog (but not for you).
you're a sweetheart, arch. thanks for the kindness. it's a great name for a blog.
it's quite the ego gratification to know that my pets worship the ground i walk on, and it's probably good for me that they occasionally remind me just exactly why they do.
You want ego gratification? Try being a professor. You walk in a room with a hundred people in it, start talking, everyone there writes down every word you say, and memorizes it. Now that is gratification.
I know my cats love me for my food dispensing ability, but one of them deposits herself beside me every time I sit at the computer. I can only assume that she believes I am the greatest writer that has ever lived. I mean, I never see her reading anything else.
:-)
she's a smart cat. i enjoy your writing too.
these cats sit around reading the books and papers i have scattered here over every horizontal surface, all of which are other peoples words. curmudgeon cat only sits up here by the computer when he's tired of fending off kittens and wants me to take over that job.
sigh... yet another puncture in my ego.
i'd make a good professor, and i'd like the life [and getting into grad school is probably the only way i'll ever get health insurance again], but my previous experience was a bit too much like absinthe's fun with particle physics. i'm reluctant to try that again. [there's a link to her blog in my sidebar, if you're interested]
Eeek. From what I can see, discrimination against women is declining (not anywhere near gone, of course) in biology. The pressure on students to produce at big-time research universities is such that anything that interferes with that is frowned upon. I have a colleague who was nearly thrown out of a lab when he took a semester off to be with his father as he died of a brain tumor.
The thing to do is to make sure you don't end up at a "first tier" school. The pressure will be somewhat less, and the people you work with more like human beings. It turns out there are men and women in the sciences who aren't total jackasses. Your mission, if you accept it, is to find one.
Well Tripe has to be cheaper than heart of palm, the favorite of a neighbor's cats, which she discovered as she made a salad from said pricey ingredient to celebrate, only to find it gone almost immediately as the cats leaped onto the counter to snarf it up.
A pair of curved forceps helps to preserve your fingers.
bryan:
i've been bitten by exactly two cats in my life, both of whom were coming out of anesthesia at the time and likely hallucinating. i know i do. nobody bites the goddess.
i love heart of palm, and you're right, it ain't cheap. this particular brand of tripe is sold by the solid gold pet food company, and the price tag bears that out.
i don't get bitten, and curmudgeon cat doesn't put up a fight. my only objection to this whole procedure is the smell.
arch:
i only accidentally ended up in biology, in which discrimination was bad enough at the time, but better than a lot of others. my interests are thankfully not particle physics, but they do still fall into the more macho realms of science.
you're right, though, i think. i think some of those problems are declining. still, it's disheartening to realize that absinthe's experiences are so recent.
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