It can prove very difficult to give some cats a pill. They will fight you, bite you and claw you. Giving a cat a pill can be very stressful to both the cat and the cat owner. The last thing a sick cat needs is more stress.

Cat scratches or bites to people have the potential to become a serious injury. The teeth and claws of a cat carry many bacteria. Cat Scratch disease is a bacterial infection which causes swelling of the lymph nodes and can make a person very sick.

Disguise the Pill in Food

Before doing battle with your cat by trying to manually thrust the pill in down it's throat, you could try disguising the pill in food.

There are two ways to do this. You can wrap the pill in some tasty food. A suggestion is to make some little meatballs from raw hamburger mince and wrap the pill inside. Make the meatball small enough so the cat doesn't have to do much chewing to make it go down. Hand feed the disguised pill to the cat so you are sure that it has been swallowed and not spat out somewhere. Cheese also works well. A softer type cheese can be moulded around the pill. Cats love cheese.
 

Another method is to crush the pill between two spoons or mortar and pestle. Sprinkle the powder over the cat's food (wet food of course, not dry food.) and mix in well. This method isn't always successful because some medication is particularly bad tasting, however, it's worth a try. Always check with your vet as some medications might be a time release medication and are not meant to be crushed.

You can use the 'Stealth' method above with or without a pill popper. Without the pill popper simply approach the sleeping cat, quickly open it's mouth and push the pill in to the back of it's throat with your finger and push it down.

Sometimes you will administer the pill but the cat will not swallow. To make a cat swallow lift the cat up approximately  9 or 10 inches in the air and then drop it suddenly. This usually forces the cat to swallow.