Giving Our Picky Cat Supplements

After my cat's diagnosis of hyperthyroidism, we opted to treat her with supplements and a diet change instead of the traditional vet medicine. I already wrote a little in another post about why and what we are giving her.

Daily, it's a lot to keep track of and balance, so I thought I would share how we give the supplements in case someone else is also trying to figure that out for their own mixture. Keep in mind, I'm just a random cat lady on the internet, just being a cat mom... I'm not an expert, and nothing I mention is advice lol

The first step we took was to label what would be given when. We opted for a morning and night schedule to allow enough time for her body to absorb the supplements. The way we staggered them was so that the individual ingredients wouldn't overlap.

I didn't go all crazy research mode on how the body absorbs supplements best or any of that, so keep that in mind as something you might want to do yourself. I was just more concerned about overdosing than anything else.

On the internet, when it comes to giving cats medicine, some people say that crushing pills will make them lose effectiveness, or that it needs to be given by itself instead of a group. For us, that's just not doable, though. For the brief time we gave her the steroids and antibiotic pills they sent her, we were crushing the pills into powder. It was the only way she would take them. My cat is smart, and she would eat everything but the pill. If she did put it in her mouth by accident, she immediately put it back out next to her bowl.

All that said, all we did was add a piece of masking tape and write the amounts per serving, and whether it was a morning/night supplement.  This made it easier during meal time to grab what we needed instead of trying to remember or read each bottle individually.

To give her the supplements, we opted for wet food. The whole selection of wet food for hyperthyroidism is a whole other topic, so I'll discuss that at another time. However, in general, we used a teaspoon to grab some wet food. Enough to mix, so it looked normal, but not so much that the wet food might dry up as she eats some and not the other. My cat's always been a picky eater, so some of her wet food had a tendency to crush up dry around the edges.

By giving her only the teaspoon at first, we are able to ensure she actually takes the supplements. We will not give her any other food option until she eats the supplement mixture. Thankfully, some of the drop flavors (gold) and the powder (Vyralis) were already part of her diet, so it was not a complete out-of-the-ordinary adjustment for her taste buds. 

If maybe she hadn't been used to it, I would have probably tried introducing each supplement at a time - figuring out which she liked most, and slowly starting to integrate others layered on top of what she liked over the course of a few days/weeks. We are thankful we got to skip that adjustment time, though.

Instead, to prepare it, all we do is add the wet food to the bowl and squish it so we can have a base to add the supplements. Then, we layer the supplements for that morning or night on top of it. After using the metal spoon, we mix it in. We then put it in a sort of mountain shape, since my cat is lazy and typically doesn't eat around the edges. Lastly, since the spoon might have some residue of the drops or powders dissolved, with the tip of a finger, we round it up, and then "scrape it off" with the edge of the spoon to get it all added on top of that mountain.

Then, she eats and gets to enjoy her normal meal. In general, the process only takes a couple of minutes, so it's doable with full-time jobs. We just make sure her supplement mix is the first thing we do when we wake up, so as we're getting ready, she's eatting her supplements, so when we're ready to leave, then she'll have the normal meal available the rest of the day. :)