How to give a cat a pill: the 10-second spout trick

It's 7am. The pill is in your hand. The cat, who has never once been on time for anything, is already under the bed.

They know. They always know.

If you've done this before, you know how it goes. The pill hidden in a bit of cheese. The cheese eaten, the pill on the floor. The towel. The scratch. The cat who won't come near you for a week.

Pill time doesn't need a towel, a pill popper or a negotiation. It needs something your cat would do anything for, and a way to get the pill down before they notice. A lickable puree does both.

Use something they'd do anything for.

The easiest way to give a cat a pill is to hide it in something soft they love. The higher the value, the better it works. A cat that comes running for a treat doesn't stop to inspect it.

And a puree beats anything they have to chew, because cats lick it straight down. No chewing means no crunching into the pill, no face of betrayal, no pill on the carpet.

The spout trick.

This is how we do it at home. It takes about ten seconds.

1. Open a pouch. Twist off the cap and squeeze until the puree fills the spout.
2. Press the pill into the spout. Push it into the puree at the tip so it's fully covered. If the pill is too big for the spout, halve it first.
3. Offer a plain lick first. From a second pouch or a spoon. Nothing to see here.
4. Then the spout. Hold the pouch out and let them lick it clean. The pill goes down with the puree.
5. Keep going. Let them have as much as you see fit afterward. The last thing they remember should be the good part.

The same trick works for capsules. Prefer a spoon? Squeeze some onto it, press the pill into the middle, cover it with a little more, and offer it the same way.

What you hide it in matters.

Here's the part nobody mentions. When a cat is on medication, pill time happens every day, sometimes twice a day, for weeks. Whatever you hide the pill in goes in every single day too.

We think pill time should be the easiest part of a hard week, not the hardest part of an easy one. And it shouldn't come with a side of things your cat doesn't need.

Flip over the pack.

Pick up a pill treat at the pet store and turn it over. Before you reach much that looks like food, you'll find glycerin to keep it soft, wheat flour and wheat gluten to give it body, dried corn syrup, xanthan gum to hold it together, and sodium bisulfate. Then natural flavors and a chicken bouillon flavor, because after all that, it needs to taste of something.

Lickable tubes have their own list. Guar gum and powdered cellulose to thicken it. Natural flavors, and a natural scallop flavor, added back in. Ten lines for a treat that's gone in ten seconds.

None of it is there for your cat. It's there to make a treat moldable, shelf stable and cheap. A cat doesn't need corn syrup to swallow a pill. A cat needs something they'd climb the curtains for.

Here's what we use instead:

That is the whole recipe

Rigby Wild Salmon & Squash for Cats: wild-caught Alaskan salmon, water, organic kabocha squash, organic tapioca starch. 52 calories a pouch.

Four ingredients, and the only recipe in the range whose panel opens with the protein. Every Rigby Essential for Cats recipe has five ingredients or fewer, printed in full. No grains, no gums, no preservatives, no added flavors. At around 50 calories a pouch, you can use as much as pill time needs, and the twist cap saves the rest.

Make pill time the best part of the day.

• Practice without the pill. Offer the pouch on days with no medication, so the pouch only ever means good news.
• Same time, same place. Cats like a routine. Pill time quietly becomes treat time.
• Reseal the rest. Cap back on, and it keeps for five days in the fridge.

What if my cat won't take the pill?

Some cats are detectives. Use less puree around the pill so it goes down in one lick. Offer two plain licks before the pill instead of one. Give it when they're hungry, not straight after dinner. Still finding it? Halve the pill so each piece disappears in a single lick.

Ten seconds. One lick. Back to their day, and yours.