I <3 Milbemax

The Sweeper

Right, you know I'm not a shill for a product, but Milbemax is my new best friend.

Just had a round of routine worming with the cats. I've now got six cats, so five are on routine adult dosing and the kitten will need a liquid or milbemax for small cats.

I've always used drontal or popantel tablets to worm my cats - they're around the size of a human headache pill. They've got a non-stick coating, but it dissolves very quickly. I never dry pill my cats - always use a syringe barrel with a little water to help the tablet go down.

I've tried using the supermarket chew tablets, and pastes in injectable syringes, but the quality of the worming medication in the supermarket brands isn't great, and the syringe pastes aren't good for larger cats because you have to use a LOAD of the paste to worm a large cat.

For the last while I've been wrestling a drontal tablet down their throats - which is a pain for my large tabby, who needs 1.5 tablets so we have two rounds of wrestling with him. My cats are fairly straightforward to worm, and I have practice so I can manage all of them.

Except Eric. Eric has never been wormed totally successfully on a routine dose. Every time, we try a tablet in the hope it'll work this time. He usually manages to turn the tablet into well-chewed sludge before we give up, and then complete the dose by mixing half of a second tablet with a half a teaspoon of room temperature butter, and lathering that into his paws so he'll lick it off. I've tried worming him myself without OH's help, and the best I've ever managed was ambushing him when he was asleep, whereupon I managed to get a full dose of syringed paste into his gob before he'd hooked the syringe with a back foot, thrown it into the wall and taken off over my shoulder.

Wrapping Eric in a towel is exceedingly distressing for him, and this is a cat that fights to the bitter end - he doesn't just capitulate and stay still but unhappy - I've had him shred the towel to bits before in the 45 seconds it took me to wrap him, straddle him and try getting worm paste into his mouth.

The other aspect is he has a lot of skin - in order to scruff Eric successfully enough to hold him still, you have to give him a temporary face lift in terms of the amount of skin you have to grab - and he STILL fights the hold.

Eric was feral up to seven months - not handled - and this is a legacy of his formative months, but what I will say is through our efforts, he forgives all manhandling within a few minutes and comes back within reach for an apologetic treat.

But today - Milbemax. Milbemax is a top notch broad spectrum wormer, but it's expensive. It comes in a small cat and large cat size. Small cat does kittens and cats up to 2kgs. Large tablets - a half of one does a cat 2-4kgs, a full one does a cat 4-8kgs. A single Milbemax tablet is around the size of a human antihistamine like Zirtek or Clarityn, versus the Drontal/Popantel nurofen-sized tablets.

Routine worming four of my adult cats was a doddle, especially for 6.5kg Frank, who just needs the one tablet instead of 1.5 drontal pills.

And Eric... well we tried the tablet first, and of course the restraining bit led to the usual epic fail.

Then I figured I'd go for something that never works - hiding the tablet in meat. When I do it with a drontal tablet, he detects it in the meat, throws a hissy fit, spits the meat out and runs around the house screeching at the deception.

I cut the Milbemax tablet in half, and hid a half each in two pieces of beef, cut smaller than 1cm cubed each piece.

Gobbled. Both bits. No tablet detected in the first piece, and though he realised the tablet was there in the second piece, the tabs are beef flavoured and it was small enough that he accepted it like a piece of gristle and, after spitting the beef out, picked it up again and ate it.

That's five cats successfully wormed, no scratches, and minimal drama. I'm a convert - even if it's the most expensive bloody thing on the market (of course it is - my cats, the cheaper alternative? Who are you kidding?!)

Blueprint

Yes, Miblemax is the wormer for an easy life with cats! I coated one with cat malt and my greedy tom cat just ate it right off as if it was a treat. Now the two females did have to have it hidden in their dinner, but they ate it in the end.

My older female is really sneaky and will keep tablets in her mouth for minutes until you stop watching her and then spit it out!

FunkyMissMonkey

I love the stuff, not to eat myself you understand!

Easy to dispense, and very effective. I've seen great results on initial application, results I'd probably rather not have seen!

Ado86

Note - should not use Milbemax and Advocate together - they are from the same drug derivative and could possibly result in a harmful drug interaction.

The Sweeper

Here they all are, hogging my bed after their routine worming...

The one looking straight at the camera is the new kitten, Cleo, here two weeks yesterday and already very much accepted. The only one with white is Eric, the formerly feral bruiser and high maintenance drama queen, much as I love him...

mymo

Lovely bunch, that kitten has a very mischievous look on her face;)
Must look out for this stuff, one of mine is a dream to worm, doesn't even stop purring, the other....devil in a fur coat:eek:
Even the dogs get out the room when I'm worming him! Have him a year(he was adult adoption) and have yet to find a successful way to do it.

Nice to see I'm not the only one to try and keep cream bedding on my bed, thinking next time to look for bedding with a paw print pattern already on it.:)

The Sweeper

They're never usually allowed on the bed. Except if we accidentally leave the door open, or if we're about to change the bed linen, in which case they're usually allowed in there for a day for a snooze. It can be useful if I need them all to be in one place at a certain time - I just leave the bedroom door open that day and I'm guaranteed to find them all on my duvet within an hour.