Of Cats and Dogs and Drugs
Fitness-blogger guru-comic (yes, she's multitalented) Skwigg posted something on her blog today about having to get a prescription for one of her dogs at the people pharmacy (see for yourself: http://skwigg.tripod.com/blog/index.blog?entry_id=1570822 ). Standard-issue pharmacists aren't used to dispensing prescriptions for the furry, and minor weirdness is prone to occur when the situation arises.
I have experience with getting pet prescriptions at the regular pharmacy, and it's just too funny. One of our three cats, Sophie, was on Valium (yes, Valium--major kitty stress!) for over a year. The place on the label where the patient's name appears read like this:
"Sophie" Smith (cat)
(My real last name was in place of the "Smith" part.) [Does anyone understand why animals' names are frequently given in quotation marks? I know that sometimes when a pet changes owners, they change names, but really, how often does that happen? A name is a name. Sometimes people's nicknames are put in quotes, but only when written together with the more formal name. We don't refer to "Elizabeth" Taylor or "Marilyn" Monroe (even though the latter's real name was Norma Jean Baker). But I digress.]
So, Sophie and the Valium adventure. We started out with uncoated Valium tablets. Major mistake. The cat is taking Valium for stress, right? What happens when you try to get a stressed cat to take a pill? She drools and foams at the mouth. What happens to an uncoated pill when it gets wet? It dissolves. In summary, the pill would be mostly washed away in drool before I ever got it into her. Sometimes I'd have to just start over with a new pill, which just made the process repeat itself. She needed to be dosed on this stuff EVERY DAY. After a couple of days of this Three Stooges routine (human/feline version), I called the vet and said, "This isn't working. Does Valium come in a liquid form?" It does, and so for the next year, we performed a minimized version of the Stooges routine daily, this one known as "Dance of the Syringes." Yep, it's a long, strange trip....
I have experience with getting pet prescriptions at the regular pharmacy, and it's just too funny. One of our three cats, Sophie, was on Valium (yes, Valium--major kitty stress!) for over a year. The place on the label where the patient's name appears read like this:
"Sophie" Smith (cat)
(My real last name was in place of the "Smith" part.) [Does anyone understand why animals' names are frequently given in quotation marks? I know that sometimes when a pet changes owners, they change names, but really, how often does that happen? A name is a name. Sometimes people's nicknames are put in quotes, but only when written together with the more formal name. We don't refer to "Elizabeth" Taylor or "Marilyn" Monroe (even though the latter's real name was Norma Jean Baker). But I digress.]
So, Sophie and the Valium adventure. We started out with uncoated Valium tablets. Major mistake. The cat is taking Valium for stress, right? What happens when you try to get a stressed cat to take a pill? She drools and foams at the mouth. What happens to an uncoated pill when it gets wet? It dissolves. In summary, the pill would be mostly washed away in drool before I ever got it into her. Sometimes I'd have to just start over with a new pill, which just made the process repeat itself. She needed to be dosed on this stuff EVERY DAY. After a couple of days of this Three Stooges routine (human/feline version), I called the vet and said, "This isn't working. Does Valium come in a liquid form?" It does, and so for the next year, we performed a minimized version of the Stooges routine daily, this one known as "Dance of the Syringes." Yep, it's a long, strange trip....
posted by Cheryl | 7:17 PM
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