Do cats like the taste of Comfortis tablets?

October 24, 2019 2:57 PM

Does your cat eat it readily, or do you end up having to "pill" him/her? My vet says Bear is too big for Revolution (he's huge), so I need to use Comfortis, but I'm not sure he'll want to eat the tablet. Any anecdotal evidence that they are yummy? He's a food and treat loving cat luckily. Oh and cat tax.
posted by bluesky78987 to Pets & Animals (13 answers total)

Best answer: No sorry, the opposite -- my cat avoided even bacon grease once we had mashed up the comfortis tablet in it. (I'm not sure you're supposed to give cats bacon grease, but we decided to go with something that we'd seen him go wild for.) I think part of the problem could be that it makes some cats nauseous, so it strengthens their dislike for the taste. (These days I just try to use a soapy comb on the cats as often as possible. I just use Dawn or something else like that.)
posted by slidell at 3:19 PM on October 24, 2019

Best answer: I give Comfortis to a feral cat I take care of, and it is apparently delicious. I crumble it on top of her food and she eats it happily. My main problem is making sure some other neighborhood cat doesn't get there first, so if I remember to, I skip her previous meal and then provide the Comfortis on top of a small serving and give her the rest of her food later. The meal-skipping part is probably a little extreme for a non-feral cat, but Mamacat is untouchable and unpillable (she'd have to be trapped and drugged) plus has a bad flea allergy and lives outside, so it's pretty important that she gets some sort of flea treatment!

I haven't tested this, but I was warned to be careful about even setting down a dish of comfortis-flavored food near my other indoor cats because anecdotally they'll gobble it up.
posted by Secretariat at 3:23 PM on October 24, 2019

But I wonder if you could give your cat one of the dog-sized doses of Revolution? Your cat looks big, but I've seen dogs bigger than your cat.
posted by Secretariat at 3:26 PM on October 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

Best answer: My cat, who is always down to eat and will scarf anything I feed him, hates Comfortis. I have to crush it up and mix it with some wet food and other things he loves: nutritional yeast, powdered goat milk, bread, etc., and even then he is very reluctant to eat it.
posted by kitty teeth at 3:27 PM on October 24, 2019

Not specifically that pill, but I use the Greenies brand Pill Pockets, and she loves those.
posted by pyro979 at 4:16 PM on October 24, 2019 [2 favorites]

Seconding Pill Pockets as an effective delivery system. Also, fistfuls of bonito flakes.
posted by mumkin at 5:03 PM on October 24, 2019 [2 favorites]

I use liverwurst or pate to give pills to my cat. I have used cheese but the liverwurst seems to cover the smell of almost every medication. If you don't want to use human food, I believe there are several brands squeezy cat treats in little tubes available. If your lovely bundle of floof is a suspicious kitty, a few decoy lumps will generally do the trick. By number three, my very suspicious moggy gives into gluttony and just savages me for the next one - all restraint thrown aside.
posted by ninazer0 at 5:56 PM on October 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Our Butterscotch Krimpet chows down on Comfortis. She will eat anything, though. She was a stray for a good while and seems to have adopted a general life policy that turning up your nose at offered calories demonstrates pitifully poor survival skills.
posted by Don Pepino at 7:35 AM on October 25, 2019

Response by poster: Thanks everybody, seems to be an even split!
posted by bluesky78987 at 7:57 AM on October 25, 2019

Best answer: Your cat is a majestic floofer and I enjoyed the picture.
posted by fiercecupcake at 8:43 AM on October 25, 2019 [5 favorites]

Best answer: Has your vet told you that you can use a combination of Revolution sizes to get to the appropriate dose? It says you can on the package insert. (Please don't use the dog version)
posted by cozenedindigo at 6:51 PM on October 25, 2019 [1 favorite]

Oops, I must have been thinking of a different flea med formulation where the dog and cat versions were the same but different sizes. I see now that Revolution for dogs contains something additional.
posted by Secretariat at 8:53 AM on October 26, 2019

Response by poster: As a followup, just posting to say . . . now I notice on Chewy.com that there is a specific version of Revolution (same stuff, bigger dose) for 15-22lb cats, indicating it is in fact "scalable" for larger cats. I have no idea why my vet didn't just say to use that or to give him a larger dose of the regular stuff. Methinks I need a different vet.
posted by bluesky78987 at 9:57 AM on October 26, 2019 [1 favorite]