Customer Reviews

Greenies Pill Pockets for Cats, Chicken, 1.6 ounce

5 star:		(80)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I have three older cats who take arthritis pills. One also takes a thyroid pill. I decided to try the pill pockets. For the first month or so, they all loved them, and they made it easy to give the pills. However, after three months:

One cat still loves them. I have to watch her carefully or she will steal the pills from the others.

One cat has figured out how to eat around the pill.

One cat sometimes takes them, but at other times just sniffs the pocket and skips it.

I have figured out a few tricks that help:

There are two types of pockets for cats: chicken and salmon. The chicken is slightly larger and more pliable and works better with larger pills. However, I think that the cats find the salmon tastier.

Get another cat treat and stick it to the side of the pill pocket. Then place the pocket so the treat faces down. My finicky cat is much more likely to eat the whole thing that way.

The pill pocket still helps with the cat who eats around it. After she eats the pill pocket, it is easier to shove the pill down her throat. She is more likely to swallow it instead of spitting it out if it tastes of pill pocket.

If you have two pills, try to fit them both in one pocket. Giving the cat fewer pockets will make it seem more of a treat.

So glad I got these. My cat is on a motility agent and I dreaded giving him the pills remembering the nightmare it was last year when I had to give him antibiotics for a month. With these it's no sweat. He gobbles it up. So much so that he begs for them. Today I got home and he'd managed to get the whole bag off the shelf he normally doesn't reach and tore up the bag and ate them all (more than 30 of them were left). I cringed at the thought of what would have happened if I'd decided to prefill the pockets with the meds. It would have been a tragedy - he would have overdosed and died. Thank goodness I had the instinct not to do that. So word of advice is do never prefill the treats in bulk. No matter how safe you think your storage place is.

...and I did. My cat was diagnosed with asthma and it was then that it became necessary to pill him daily. He was feral his first year of life so pilling has always been impossible, especially since I have no one to help me with the whole process. Thanks to pill pockets, I have kept him alive and his asthma under control by myself, without adding to his condition due to stress (a common asthma trigger) from forced pilling. I've heard that some cats don't go for these treats, but my two boys gobble them up, pill and all. I'm not sure what I would have tried next if these hadn't worked. If you've had trouble pilling and you've run out of ideas, they are definitely worth a shot. Of course, if your cat is super smart and knows how to spit out pills, the treats, in and of themselves, are still great snacks!

I have struggled for over a year and a half in giving my cat a daily pill. She foams and vomits easily and she and I both dread this daily torture. I have tried to bury the pill in every treat and delicious food I could think of, including raw liver, but as soon as she smelled the pill (which has a disgusting bitter taste, the vet says), she wouldn't try anything. But this week I tried the chicken-flavored pill pocket, and my cat just about stood on my head to get it out of my hand so she could eat it. She goes absolutely nuts for it and doesn't detect her pill at all. The worst part of my cat's day (the worst part of my day, too) is now great! I recommend this stuff highly.

Note: After a few weeks, my cat decided she no longer liked the chicken flavor, but continues to eat the salmon flavor one. But sometimes she won't eat it unless I wrap some small cat treats on it like a sandwich. You don't need to use the entire pill pocket for small pills - I pinch off what I need, and so the bag lasts a long longer than usual.

I used these when my cat had to take antibiotic pills for an upper respiratory infection. They worked well, but I learned a couple of things:
1. Feed him the pill pockets alone a couple of times.
2. VERY IMPORTANT - Use one hand for the pill and the other for the pocket, and never let them touch. I accidentally let the pill hand touch the pocket and he wouldn't eat it because he smelled the pill.
The pill pockets were much easier than trying to pill and then squirt water into the cat.

As a veterinarian, I've dispensed a lot of medications for both dogs and cats...that is, until I had to start medicating my own pets. I've became a lot more empathetic now that I've realized that I can barely pill my own cat (who runs away from me), and that my dog will not take pills in cheese or peanut butter. In fact, pilling my own pets has smartened me up on what meds pets really need. As a result, I've started prioritizing pills - in other words, I rank the order of importance of each prescription for pet owners, so they know which pills are an absolute MUST give, and which ones they can skip if they are getting desperately fed up with pilling.

Since then, my life has changed... thanks to Pill Pockets. I regret not inventing these, as it was one of those "duh" products that came out, making you wish you had the money-making patent. Whoever owns a dog that needs to be pilled chronically, pay heed. The Greenies Pill Pockets are awesome... that is, for dogs, at least.
My dog recently got put on a bunch of medications, and he's super picky (although less so, since getting put on steroids!). Being that he needs a total of 5 medications a day, I found Pill Pockets to be a true life saver, as they improve both my dog's and my quality of life. These little tasty, greasy, soft, malleable pockets are designed so that you can stick the pill (or multiple pills) in the center, and seal them into a hidden ball of "treat." It's like playing with palatable play-dough. Drop it in the food, and voila, it "makes pills a treat to give!"

The pros: Pill Pockets are easy, convenient, tasty, and come in multiple flavors (Dog: beef and chicken; Cat: salmon and chicken. It also comes in a hypoallergenic flavor - duck and pea - for both species with food allergies). More importantly, they are palatable - dogs seem to love them. Another pro is that they come in multiple sizes, and I'm able to stuff 5 pills - yes all 5 pills - into the larger "capsule" dog Pill Pockets.

The cons: One of my two cats won't touch Pill Pockets. This is, of course, the cat who actually needs to take medication. He also won't touch Feline Heartgard monthly chewable pills either, so I suspect he doesn't like moist treats. So, try at your own risk, particularly if you have a finicky cat. The other con is that Pill Pockets are a bit greasy - they have a high vegetable oil content. As ingredients are listed in order of use, vegetable oil is #4 for the dog pill pockets. While this doesn't affect the health of your pet, a hand-washing is a MUST after playing with Pill Pockets (which you should always do when handling your pet's meds, anyway). That said, I know that the vegetable oil is needed to keep the Pill Pockets malleable (easy to fold and maneuver). The other con - cost. They're not cheap, and if your pet is on loads of meds, it can certainly add up. Try jamming 5 pills in one capsule to help. But anything for Fido, right?!

For dogs, 5 stars. For cats, I'm only giving 3 stars, as only one of my two cats will eat them!

Dr. Justine Lee, DVM, DACVECC
Author of "It's a Dog's Life... but It's Your Carpet" and "It's a Cat's World... You Just Live In It"
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These are awesome. Not knowing that this product existed, I've been trying to make my own ad-hoc pill pockets with wet cat food. When the food is too soft, my cat licks it right off the pill. When the food is too firm, my cat has figured out how to crumble it apart to leave the pill in the bowl. But this product is perfect. The material is pliable (almost like chicken flavored Play-Doh) but won't allow cats to lick it away or crumble it apart. In fact, while he eats it, I've been listening for the "crunch" that indicates that he bit into the bitter pill, but so far he's been swallowing it silently and whole, so it seems like the softness makes him believe he doesn't have to chew it - this is great, since he has no idea what's inside. Now my cat begs me for his "treat" each day, even though he's a really picky eater and has turned down other new cat treats numerous times in the past. I was a bit shocked at the price, but I was at my wits end trying to pill my cat, so I am willing to pay for the peace of mind.

My cat is extremely picky when it comes to treats, so I was leery about whether she would eat these or not. I fed her a couple of her regular treats, then one of these, then a couple of hers, then one of these in order to trick her into trying them. She likes them!

After doing this for several different days, I put a pill in one of them. She is little, so when I put the pill in one treat she chewed it, which is not what I wanted her to do, since she also chewed the pill. She takes Prednisolone, which apparently has an awful, bitter taste. So the next time I put the pill in the pocket, closed it and squeezed off all the excess Greenie treat until I got a little ball. I fed her a couple of her regular treats, then snuck the pill treat in. When she started to chew I put another treat in front of her quickly which made her swallow the pill treat whole so that she could eat the next treat.

These work great for me! No more having to sit on top of her, holding her down as she fights me, prying open her mouth and shoving the little pill to the back of her throat, just to have her spit it out so that I have to start the whole process all over again. I'm sold, and I will be using these from now on.

If you have a cat who is prone to gobbling treats whole, these will likely work. My cat, however, chews treats, so she breaks the pocket open and then tastes the pill and spits it all out. It would likely work best with small pills and then you could use part of the pocket and maybe the cat would swallow it without chewing. You need to be extremely careful if the pill is bitter; if you handle the pill and get residue on your hand and then use those fingers to pinch the pocket shut, it will get residue on the outside, which makes the cat less likely to take it. It might help to just feed a few as treats without pills in the beginning to get them used to the idea that they are treats?

I had been using these with much success for my cat for the last 8 months. He has to have seizure medication twice a day, and he loves the pill pockets. About 3 months ago, he started having chronic diarrhea that got worse and worse. The vet tested him for everything and did x-rays and tried multiple medications, but he still didn't get better. Than as a last thought, we decided to try to stop using the pill pockets completely and just giving him his medication in his food. Within 5 days, our cat was back to normal, and within a few weeks he wasn't dehydrated anymore and gained some weight back. I was very pleased with this product until I realized it was what was making my cat sick. I thought it might just be him, but I found other sites online where people had cited the same problem. I think this is a great product for help administering short-term medications, but I would make sure to monitor your cat if you are using them long-term. If your cat starts getting chronic diarrhea, these may be the cause.