Nothing new going on here. I don't want to talk about being pregnant or the baby.

We are having some continued adventures with Charlie. I went to the vet on Friday and picked up a prescription for him - some anti-inflammatories to try and get his little body back in order. Giving medication to a cat is never fun, but if it's something relatively non-offensive, you can usually trick them by sticking it in with some food. We tried this technique with Charlie's new medication and it did not work.

The first time he ate around the pill, so the next time we crushed it up and mixed it with the food and he just refused to touch the food at all. We also tried tricking him by giving him a couple of treats and then slipping him a pill. No luck. So, we had to resort to holding him down and putting the pill down his throat. This is still only marginally effective though.

If it doesn't work the first time and he gets all freaked out, it's nearly impossible to get his jaws back open - he's strong! Also, apparently these pills are very bitter and Charlie finds them to be the most vile thing he's ever encountered. If it takes a couple of attempts to get the pill down him and it starts to disentigrate on his tongue, he foams at the mouth and gets these long drool strings on either side like a slobbering dog!

He's actually convinced that we're trying to poison him. We had so much trouble over the weekend that I went back to the vet's office on Monday and bought a "piller". This is like a long syringe that allows you to sort of pop the pill into the back of his throat without sticking your whole hand in his mouth. It still took me a while to get the hang of using it.

I was being too nice at first and only putting it on the back of his tongue, which meant that he could just spit it back out and run. It has to go all the way into his throat and then you quickly rub the front of his throat to encourage him to swallow. This also has the benefit of keeping the pill from dissolving at all on the tongue, so he doesn't really taste it.

I think we've successfully gotten the pill down him the past two attempts, with a minimum of backflips or foaming at the mouth. Now, hopefully, it will do him some good. Although dosing will be disrupted again once I go into labor. Well, we shall see. I tried explaining to him that this was for his own good, but he didn't believe me...