I decided it was time to
de-worm the cats. I
scoured the shelves in the
pet section of the local
supermarket for the
apparatus with which to inflict this
humiliating and annoying
grief upon our two
felines. Expecting to find a
kit containing
thick leather gloves, a ball of
cat-proof twine, and a
minuscule tasty
beef-flavoured pill to shove down it's throat, I was disappointed to find my selection was limited to
two kinds. One, was small, yet
relative to a cat's size would have been the
equivalent to you or I being
force-fed a baseball, and the other was large and brown. The larger one claimed to be
liver flavoured, and had a
picture of a cat
standing on its hind legs voluntarily taking a pill from a
well manicured hand.
I looked down at my rough, badly chewed nails and grubby hands, but still decided that that was the pill for us (well, the cats really). I purchased these pills and went home with thoughts of the cats greedily gobbling up the pills and meowing for more.
Upon offering one to each cat, they sniffed them for a while and walked off. "Hmmm" thinks I, not exactly as I had imagined, but there is more than one way to drug a cat. I broke the pills up, and strategically placed bits all over the top of their jellymeat. Returning later, I found small bits of meat-covered pills around the outside of the bowl, and all the meat gone. They had managed to somehow sort the "delicious" liver-flavoured pill-fragments from the rest of their meat - and without an opposable thumb too!
"Right!" says I, "Time to get serious about this". I washed out their bowls, watching $3 worth of delicious liver-flavoured worm tablets wash down the garbage disposal. I filled their bowls with fresh milk and dry cat biscuits. Amongst the biscuits I secreted broken fragments of more of the pills (the last from the packet). The cats, less hungry after their bowl of jellymeat, and slightly more wary after having to sort foreign objects from their last meal, started eating their biscuits. I watched, and was astounded to see them shove their faces into the bowl, and totally miss each bit of the pills.
If you want my opinion, the worms can eat them from the inside out. Come and see me when you are a hollow shell, and worm heads start breaking through your fur. Then we'll start talking about yummy liver-flavoured pills.