Pilling Your Cat: A Beginner’s Guide

By Shawn

What you will need:

cat (alive)
pills for the cat
pill pockets

Steps:

1. Make sure you have a cat and that it’s alive (see “What you will need”).
2. Check that your cat has some kind of medical problem—if it doesn’t, you can stop right here.
3. Get the pills that are supposed to fix whatever is wrong with the cat.
4. Make sure that the cat doesn’t like the taste of the pills, because that will increase the challenge.
5. Try to feed pill to cat and fail spectacularly.
6. Go out and spend a bunch of money on pill pockets.
7. Make sure that the cat doesn’t like the taste of the pill pockets; this should be easy, because you own a cat, and it wants this to be terrible for you.
8. Put the pill in the pill pocket and feed it to the cat.
9. What a surprise, the cat won’t eat it.
10. Attempt to force feed it to the cat.
11. What’s that? The cat spit it out? As though it were a complete waste of money? As though your time and effort mean nothing?
12. Hey, I know. The cat likes treats. What if you mashed up some treats and coated the pill in the treat dust?
13. Sees right through your ruse. Hates the pill. Hates you.
14. Maybe force-feeding wasn’t working because the pill keeps sticking to the inside of the cat’s mouth. What about coating it in a little olive oil and giving it another try?
15. Okay, toooo much olive oil.
16. No, stop spitting—stop spitting the pill out. You’re getting covered in olive oil. You look like an otter caught in a BP spill.
17. Look, here’s a treat. Here’s a normal treat. Mmm. Good, right? Maybe the next thing I feed you will be a treat? Maybe give it a try, huh?
18. No more treats until you take this. Stop meowing. Real treats are for closers.
19. For the love of Moses, this pill is to fix your stupid bowels! DON’T YOU WANT TO POOP LIKE A NORMAL CAT?!?
20. Oh come on, don’t run away. Don’t track your oil-stained body through the—no, get off the couch. Oh god, it’s covered in—no, not the blanket, it sheds—you’re tarring and feathering yourself, just—
21. You’re an oil slick covered in blanket fuzz, and you’ve wedged yourself under the couch.
22. Mmkay, well, I guess we’ll have to try this again later. How many pills a day are you supposed to take again?
23. FIVE?
24. …
25. Sell cat. Purchase plant.