Gabapentin and cats--your experience?

[raccoon]

Gabapentin is supposed to make cats calmer. Last time my cat had her shots, the vet gave me a few gabapentin capsules. They told me to give it to her 2 hours before going to the vet's office (always a fun trip

I did exactly as told but it didn't make much, if any, difference in her behavior.

They were 100 mg capsules. I wonder if I should've given her two instead of just one. I'll ask the vet about that before trying it. She's a fairly large cat (12 lbs).

[SheltieLover]

1. Have you tried pheremones?

Sorry, no experience with gabapentin & cats.

[rokar]

2. Gabapentin and cats

We have given gabapentin to two of our cats. One of them currently. We haven't had any problems. Our vet gives it to us in liquid form which we put in his morning food, which is from a can and has lots of liquid in it already. It works for them. Both of them are under ten pounds, so you may be correct about her weight having an effect on how well it works.

Good luck.

[radical noodle]

3. I gave gabapentin to one of my cats

He was impossible to pill, so I got it in transdermal form. I'm not sure of the dosage I used, and he died last November, so I no longer have the medication to look at. He needed more than the original dosage, and we had doubled it. He had no bad experiences with it.

[Eva Jo]

4. Gabapentin and our Lizzie-cat

Our Lizzie was on gabapentin for a couple of years, for arthritis and other issues, to help her sleep. It seemed to help. The day we had to say goodbye, the vet told us to overdose her in hopes she would be comatose before she got there. Didn't quite work as she woke up in the vet's office. It was awful. She was 17 but still a fighter. Best little girl-cat we ever had and oh now I'm gonna cry. It's been three years and I still miss her.

[SuzyandPuffpuff]

5. I had liquid

Lg cat. Full ml. Very stoned ... like us ... each is individual... I ended up only giving half after and I like it. Takes the edge off.

[Nigrum Cattus]

6. I won't give it

I have been prescribed it and after just on week I started
having memory problems. It took 3 months to get my full
memory back. It is a seizure medication actually. VetCBD
is something that might help, also catnip.

[piddyprints]

7. Our Luna takes it on occasion.

She gets this thing where she acts like something is chasing her. She stops running around for a bit and then starts biting her tail, then starts running around again. She loves to be picked up and held, and she comes when she's called. But when she's like that she doesn't even know me. I catch her as quickly as I can and give her a very small dose of 0.2cc oral liquid. She's a petite 8 pounder and quite sensitive to drugs, so it doesn't take much. We have the syringes made up ahead and keep them in the refrigerator. For her, it is almost instantaneous and she is her normal self by the time I finish washing my hands. We had to do it more when she was little. Now she's 6 and I've only had to do it once this year so far.

We do keep Feliway diffusers going and they seem to make a big difference. She likes to sit near them and sniff them. She even does her stinky face to them sometimes. I'm pretty sure we had run out the time we had to use the Gabapentin this year.

I know it all sounds totally wacky, but that describes our sweet Luna. Strangely, she is calm when we go to the vet's office. (Did I mention she's wacky?)

You might want to ask about the dosage considering that you have a large cat.