Theory: cat tranquilizers are placebos. They are intended to make your cat sleepy by inducing her to fight you tooth and nail to avoid swallowing the pill, thus tiring her.
Data points collected: It took 45 minutes to force-feed the pill to Qubit, who wails on car rides. She mewed three times total. Tazendra, who usually is barely annoying at all on car rides, swallowed her tranq on the first try, and whined a third of the time.
Comments
cat tranqs
We stopped using tranqs for Fleetwood. She never quite goes out is is always really unconfortable for the ride and then about a day after. This does make us endure a siren for a few hours, unless RAD has the free hand to hold her, but we don’t like seeing her recover from the meds.
Re: cat tranqs
Well, they told me it wouldn’t knock them out, and the girls recovered quite well from the pills (tho’ the trauma of being fed them stuck to Qubit’s dignity for a while.)
After a second day, on which I had athletic cousins holding Qubit down for me, I have adjusted my hypothesis. The pills are basically anti-anxiety pills, not soporifics. Q is terrified of driving, and cars, and sounds, and boxes, and oh my oh my! so anti-anxiety fits the bill. Tazendra, on the other hand, gets BORED in a box. She can’t SEE, and she wants to PLAY, and am I LISTENING out there? Therefore, the anti-anxiety pills don’t affect her muchly. She ain’t anxious.
I don’t think I could have coped with Qubit’s screaming for eight hours, let alone thirteen. I just don’t. The occasional mew? Sure. The wailing? Noooooo.