You gotta get up earlier than that to outfox the cats

Look, I’m just warning you, this post is kind of gross. If you can’t handle gross things about animals, this one should be a skip for you.

My sister recently told me a really disgusting story about her dog and because of that I’m subjecting you all to this tale.

I found vomit in my garage. This isn’t terribly unusual, sadly. The unusual part was the long noodle that was present in it. I took a picture and asked Gemini to identify it. Gemini could not definitively give me an answer but did agree, “it looked organic in nature and possibly alive.” Ok, well it was a worm. I left it there to run an errand and ponder my next steps. I returned from the errand and inspected the pile again. The noodle had moved to a different location in the pile. Confirmation: it was alive.

I clearly needed to call the vet, because some animal in my household had worms. The problem is, I have so very many animals, it’s impossible to identify from whence the vomit came. I called the vet and explained the situation and she agreed to dose everybody: 3 dogs and 2 cats. We spared the chickens.

I picked up the meds later that night, each animal had his or her own pill bottle with the assigned dose. I needed to dose everybody within the same time frame so nobody would pass on the problem to anybody who had already been dosed. It was a very tricky game to play. The dogs were easy, put anything in peanut butter and problem solved.

The cats on the other hand….the cats…

I had many concerns about how to approach this, the primary being that I needed to find the cats. Since I had already dosed the dogs, the clock was ticking. I stood outside and turned in a slow circle. No pouncing, no claws climbing my leg. That was the only trick I had.

The secondary concern was the pills. Have you ever given a pill to a cat? Would it involve swaddling? Also cats are so small, their little triangle nose-mouth area is tiny. How would I cram this pill in there? What if they choked? Cats are tricky little fiends.

I couldn’t find the cats that same night, which put a 12 hour stressor into my dosage window. But it did give me time to research strategies. The internet very aggressively told me peanut butter was not a good choice. It then told me cats are mostly carnivores so the best option was to mix the pill into their wet food.

Assume much, Google? My cats don’t get wet food. The only wet food they get is what they’ve hunted themselves and I’m not about to track down every bunny to dose them on the off chance they’re the next target. I honed in on the word “carnivore” and decided to lean into that.

I got up early in the morning and stood outside slowly turning in a circle once again. One doesn’t really find cats, one is found by cats. Sure enough, the grey one approached. I scooped her up and brought her in the house. This happens so rarely that she was immediately suspicious. I wrapped the pill in a piece of deli meat and then held it tightly in my fist. I let her smell my fist, I let her lick at my fingers, I teased her until she was probably going to scratch me then I opened my hand and she snapped it right up and swallowed it whole! The meat bundle, not my hand. Success.

Then I really had to find the next cat. A few hours later I tracked him down tripped over him and did the same meat strategy with the same result! Victorious.

It shouldn’t surprise anybody, least of all me, that we ran in to this worm problem. These cats regularly consume wild rabbits, birds, mice, you name it. So if the worms weren’t theirs, they definitely passed them onto the dogs in some manner.

I’m pretty proud of myself for my strategies but am a little sad I don’t have another animal to add to the list of those I’ve swaddled. Roosters, chickens, dogs, and babies, it’s bound to be the cats’ turn eventually.