no more pills for the reticent cat

the reticent patient

Some time ago, Ethan's cat, Red was diagnosed with arthritis. At first, it was very mild -- hardly noticeable (by us at least). But it has gotten worse. We often see it when he walks. Even more so when he climbs stairs. Sometimes he looks more like he's hopping, rabbit-like, to avoid pain.

Our vet recommended something called Cosequin. I don't know if that's a generic name or a brand name, but it's a "joint health supplement" for cats. It contains glucosamine, chondroitin and manganese. So, every morning, Blair would give Red one of these pills. Suffice to say he didn't like them. Fortuntaely, he's a red male Maine Coon. And he's 11 years old. So, while he would struggle and resist the pill, he never bit or scratched. We'd been seeing some progress. He seemed to be more comfortable on the stairs. But, who knows -- maybe we were imagining it.

But we stopped this week.

We'd been starting to wonder if the benefits of the pill (which we couldn't be sure were real) were outweighed by the stress that they were clearly causing. Until we started this regimen, Red was always friendly in the morning. He was always on someone's bed, and was happy to be held and pet when people started getting up. But after we started giving him pills, he started spending his nights downstairs. I'd go down in the morning and find him on the sofa, eyeing me suspiciously. And if I went to pick him up, he'd try to get away. Now, it's easy to say that he doesn't know what's good for him and we should just force him -- having less pain will improve his quality of life. While that last point is true, constant stress is bad for his quality of life. And he was clearly stressed out. And, of course, we don't relish the idea of repeatedly dealing with cat pee in the bed.

So, for now, Red doesn't get pills. And we've embarked on the slow process of getting him to accept that.

Now, I see on Amazon that there's a chewable version of the pills. Maybe they're formulated to taste good. I think we'll try those and see what happens.