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Our Guru kitty Max is good at a lot of things, but what he’s best at is Doing What He Wants At All Times.
And he’s very good at communicating his desires.
I’d like to go outside now.
I’d like to sit on your lap now.
I’d like to scratch you now.
So when there are things the Guru has to do that he does not want to do?
That’s when things get fun!
The latest I-Don’t-Want-To-Do-It activity on the Guru’s agenda has been his daily pill.
Max is the 6th Guru kitty I’ve had. At various times in the lives of all of my previous Gurus, I’ve had to give them a pill. Even Lucy, a tortoiseshell who totally lived up to the diva reputation of torties, allowed me to give her a pill.
Max? Not so much.
We have one pill we already give him twice a day, but we’re able to sneak that into his food.
There’s no sneaking this new pill into anything.
We tried it in his meals. Not a chance.
We tried it in a piece of chicken. I don’t think so.
He hates the taste of the pill and wants nothing to do with it.
But we have to give it to him.
The Guru has a host of medical issues, including hyperthyroidism and chronic kidney disease (CKD). The CKD is making him nauseous, which is resulting in loss of appetite and inability to keep his food down.
The pill the Guru loathes is an anti-nausea medicine and it’s amazing. It gives the Guru his appetite back and allows him to eat his CKD food and the thyroid pill that’s hidden within.
It’s basically a miracle pill that solves a host of problems, in one fell swoop.
Only the Guru is not interested in the swoop.
The Guru wants to stay far, far away from the swoop.
When I first realized that we were going to have to give the Guru a pill every day, I couldn’t even imagine it.
Our first attempts at Guru pill giving were hopeless.
Melissa wrapped him in a towel to contain him. Only he couldn’t be contained. She was trying to wrap his body like a burrito, so that only his head stuck out, but he kept clawing his way out of the burrito, scratching both of us in the process.
Once we were finally able to get him stuffed into the lumpy burrito towel, then it was time to somehow get the pill into his mouth.
There’s a little trick I used to do with my previous kitty Gurus. You squeeze the sides of their jaw, which causes them to open their mouths so you can pop the pill right in there.
When we squeeze the side of Max’s jaw, it causes him to clamp his jaw even more firmly shut. As if to say, There is no way you or anyone else is putting anything in my mouth. My mouth is a fortress. It belongs to me and only me. If you value your life, you will retreat from the fortress immediately.
But we had to put a pill in the fortress!
We have some friends with a Guru kitty in a similar situation (Hi, Abby and Geena!), and they told us about the pill pusher. Do you know about these things? Little syringe-like tools that allow you to simply place the syringe in the pet’s mouth and deposit the pill in the back of their throat.
So easy, right?
Except we were dealing with a fortress and a lumpy, writhing burrito.
The Guru reacted to the pill pusher in much the same way he reacted to the towel wrapping – by thrashing and squirming and doing all he could to escape.
Sometimes the pill went into the fortress. But sometimes it didn’t. In those cases, he’d spit out the pill and we’d have to put it back in the pill pusher and try again. Sometimes he’d spit it out again and we had to repeat the process.
Usually we’d eventually get the pill in the fortress. But sometimes we didn’t. Sometimes we’d just give up.
And this. This is what we were supposed to do every day?
Like I said, I couldn’t imagine it.
It felt too hard. It felt the quality of the Guru’s life – and ours – was going to be irrevocably damaged by this daily thrashing, writhing ritual.
But we had to do it. The Guru needed us to.
And like all things Guru related, when the Guru needs us, we do what is required.
Which in this case included a daily trip to the fortress.
At first it was horrible. More squirming. More scratching. More failures to get the pill into the Guru’s mouth.
But then we learned some things.
We learned that if Melissa held the Guru in his burrito verrry firmly, the Guru calmed down. His body even started to relax when he was in the burrito.
We also learned that I needed to do the same thing. I needed to hold the Guru’s head very firmly before I put the pill pusher into the fortress. My firm grip, like with the burrito, also seemed to calm him down.
We also learned (from our vet) that approaching the fortress from the front of the Guru’s mouth was perceived as an attack. (Attack the fortress from the front? Noooooo.) When I put the pill pusher in from the side, the Guru responded much better.
We also learned that I needed to put the pill pusher alllll the way into the back of Max’s mouth, deep into the interior of the fortress, so he wouldn’t spit it out.
All this learning happened gradually, by doing the Impossible Thing every day.
And little by little, it got better.
Now, we’re months in. Every night, before dinner, the Guru waits in the living room, right next to the couch where we give him his pill. He knows what’s coming. He doesn’t love it, but he knows he gets fed dinner right after, so it’s worth it.
Melissa wraps him in the towel, holding him tight. I hold his head firmly and pop in the pill. Just like that.
Then we release him from the burrito and feed him a yummy dinner.
What once seemed impossible is now part of our daily routine.
Thanks to the Guru, we are reminded that we can do hard things. Things that seem inconceivable when we first look at them.
How many times have I had something that feels too difficult to face? Something I can’t even imagine getting through?
And yet, somehow, I do it. I get through.
Being human is hard. There’s no way around it.
There are fortresses. And scratches. And lots of yowling.
Maybe the Guru actually loved getting his pill right from the beginning. Maybe he was just resisting to strengthen our resilience muscles.
I wouldn’t put it past him.
He is a Guru, after all.
How about you? How have you gotten through impossible challenges? Share your comments below!
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