So, I am a veterinarian. I have been practicing for 25+ years. The one thing that all vets know to avoid is pilling cats. Do we do it? Yes. Do we recommend it? Not really. Cats are, quite simply, ‘those that shall not be pilled.’
So, who cares and what do this have to do with ANYTHING? Bear with me….I promise I will make this somewhat relevant to current affairs.
So, these big companies make PILLS for cats. Now, any veterinarian or veterinary technician or cat owner knows the folly in this. Cats are not dogs. You can literally shove your hand down a dog’s throat with a pill and get them to swallow it. You can hide pills in food for dogs and they will usually eat it. Hell, some dogs(Labrador Retrievers) will eat pills nekkid, with no condiments whatsoever. But cats? Noooooo.
One of the manufacturers who supply vets is Elanco. Our Elanco sales Rep is an amazing beautiful young man. I’ll call him John(not his real name). John is pretty new to the game. They sent him out like a lamb to slaughter to sell CAT PILLS. They had a whole script for him to follow….how they flavored the pills and cats LOVED them. It’s only once a month…..it’ll be fine. The cats will eat them. His bosses actually sent an innocent out to try to convince vets to buy PILLS FOR CATS. I am ashamed to say I laughed at poor John. I couldn’t help it.
He left me samples. I tried to get my cats to eat them. I put gravy on them. I wrapped them in cheese. I managed to pill my own cats…..but it took me over 10 years to come up with foolproof pill tossing method that works 90% of the time. But, if you miss ONCE, you will never pill that particular cat again. Usually, in fact, once you have successfully pilled a cat, you will likely not pill that cat again either. They are ‘those who will not be pilled.’
Now this same company came up with another cat medication that is transdermal. You just put it on cat skin and they absorb it. Easy peezy….but they still make the cat PILLS…..and sell them in a serious manner. Now, I have no doubt the active ingredient works once inside the cat……but what good is a pill for cats? Not much, that’s what.
Now, let’s get down to the nitty gritty and why this is relevant to people who don’t care about cats. Many pharma companies are just like Elanco and make PILLS FOR CATS. The researchers likely have PhDs and years of experience in research. They are likely also credentialed in all sorts of things. Some of them may be geniuses. They can formulate drugs that can save animals and people a lot of suffering…..and they make PILLS FOR CATS. Why am I yelling this? Because it does not matter how good a drug is if it’s delivered poorly or undeliverable. The actual drug in the pill is a good drug….but, there was a decision made by the company to make this drug into a pill….FOR CATS.
Now, it’s highly likely that anything that can be a pill can also be a liquid. A good chemist can likely formulate any drug into a liquid. WHY wouldn’t they do that? Why would they continue to make PILLS FOR CATS? And this is where you get down to the really important thing about modern drug manufacturers. They have to make money and EVEN if it means the end product makes no practical sense, they don’t care, as long as it’s profitable. Are the PILLS FOR CATS profitable? I don’t really know….I can’t imagine how. I won’t stock them…I like my clients too much. I stock the stuff you put on the skin or the liquids. But it’s hard to package doses of liquids, so you would have to sell a whole bottle and that could treat multiple cats and that means you can’t make money on all that individually packaged product. It’s a game to these companies.
Now I’m not saying they aren’t exceedingly clever and good at developing new medicines. They obviously are. But…..they are concerned about profit most of all. Some nitwit in their accounting department, who likely owns a Labrador Retriever that eats everything, crunched the numbers and decided the best way to sell this cat product was to make it a PILL. Now, this person never considered that the cat was ‘he who shall not be pilled.’ This person ONLY considered the economics, not the practicality.
So what? You don’t own a cat, so what do you care? Well, they make the same sort of financial decisions in human medicine as well. They don’t worry about the end result, just the bean counting. They defy all logic at times in pursuit of financial gain. Is this evil? I think it’s more of a stupid naivete than anything else. It only becomes evil when the profit clearly comes at the cost of patient safety….oh and they HAVE done this in the past. My point is this….these ‘experts’ and ‘researchers’ who are so much smarter than us. We should never question them because we are not worthy. We don’t have alphabet soup after our names, therefore, we are the dumb ones…..
But you know what I say to that???? They made PILLS FOR CATS……..