Pill Popping

It’s not been the easiest day. Poor Olga turned up for work and nearly fainted with pain after about an hour – we took her to the pharmacist who is the front line of medical emergency problems, and he was pretty certain he had identified her problem. A lot of tangled tales in fractured English later, it emerged that she had been prescribed an antibiotic by her own doctor, but it was causing problems of its own;  they’d given her a penicillin derivative and I guess she’s allergic to penicillin, which is far from unknown, but language problems had prevented her from clear that she was having real difficulties. We took her home, wrote out a brief account of what seemed to be happening, and left her to it, since the doctors’ wasn’t open. Meanwhile, Miss Kit and I also have antibiotic related problems. I’ve got terribly good at squirting Metacam painkiller into her, and she hasn’t resented it,  but four days ago, the vet thought it would be worth trying her on an antibiotic. The Metacam is liquid, and once it’s in, it’s in, because cats can’t really spit. They can, however, eject a pill. Yesterday, I fired the pill (in fact, a capsule) down her throat six times, and each time she managed to gag it up. It was so upsetting it’s temporarily (I hope) damaged our relationship: she keeps, as usual, asking to be picked up but once on my knee worries I am about to torture her and flounders off again. I haven’t had the heart to try and give her today’s capsule, but comfort myself with the thought of what happened yesterday. She is very partial to a little raw meat, and I take a night-time snack up to bed with us, because she prefers eating at night to during the  day. Last night, along with the usual kibble, she had a bit more raw meat (having walloped some down earlier) one piece of which had a  capsule cunningly inserted so that it was quite invisible. Eating in the dark, she fell for it, because it was all quite gone come the morning. I hope this ploy goes on working, because however good the antibiotic may be for her physically, these struggles are striking st the core of her little world, which is essentially, her trust in me.