Yes, we are still hosting MM in involuntary protective custody.
The weather has been changeable lately, going from somewhat too warm to a bit too cold and back over the course of a couple of hours–and lately we’ve had rain in the mix as well.
MM has been coping by sleeping in one of the shelters.
Don’t let that peaceful scene fool you. She’s still not happy about her confinement. A few moments after I took this picture, she woke up and realized I was looking at her. That clearly was beyond the pale and she immediately claimed the high ground, climbing to the highest shelf on the catio. Safely above the intruder, she then launched a series of hisses to let me know not to come any closer than was necessary to clean her litter box.
Meanwhile, Rufus and Lefty were also unhappy for a while. They picked up a nasty upper respiratory infection. Lefty’s more robust immune system limited the trouble to bouts of sneezing. He just needed a little help, and he was quite happy to take his antibiotics wrapped in pill pockets.
Rufus, on the other paw, was hit much harder. He had the sneezes as well, but he also had a very runny nose and drippy eyes. He hated the eye-drops and loathed having pills forced down his throat (because of his lack of teeth, pill pockets are too much for him to swallow. It was obvious that nothing tasted right, and even with the bowls elevated, he still dripped snot onto his food, which just compounded the problem.
Yes, he does seem to have made a full recovery, but he didn’t have any qualms about telling everybody just how he felt about the multiple visits to the vet.
Fortunately for everybody involved, she didn’t take it personally. She was, in fact, quite amused and insisted on getting a picture for his permanent record in their computer system.
Koi Scribblings 
It’s so nerve racking having a sick cat, not least, as you note, because their cooperation with treatment is always unpredictable. We have to medicate Lilly Bast every day for thyroid, and it’s a roll of the dice whether she’ll wolf up the pill pocket or just daintily nibble all around the pill. Also, she only eats it for the Engineer. I apparently suck.
I hope everyone stays well from here on in.
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Thanks for the good wishes. From your lips to the gods’ ears.
The vexing thing about this go-round with Rufus was that we couldn’t use the usual trick of putting the pills in his bisque. The pills were coated with something that kept us from chopping them up small enough for Rufus to swallow without noticing. He’s on asthma meds now, and–praise Grumpy Cat–they’re liquid, so we can mix ’em into the bisque.
You’re right–it really is a crap shoot. Though we’ve noticed that the longer the cat has spent on the streets, the less likely they are to reject anything that even approximates food.
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Here’s to happy healing! Our vet once used an antibiotic injection for an untouchable feral … not sure if she was going “off book” on its use, but it solved the URI and saved us the trouble of trying to pill an uncooperative feral.
The only other trick I’ve learned is, instead of chopping pills, using a mortar/pestle to grind the pills into dust (which we mix with an equally smooshed/dusted freeze dried chicken cat treat and hide in the gravy/liquid of the wet food). Pill coating might screw up this hack though.
Good luck … and a chin scratch for Rufus!
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Our go-to trick for pill pulverizing involves a hammer and a sandwich baggie, and even that was no match for the pill coating. The tablet innards powdered just fine, but the coating remained stubbornly shard-like.
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With, of course, some of the pill innards remaining attached to the coating, so simply discarding the jagged bits wasn’t really an option either.
We’ve considered a spice grinder, but then you risk losing a lot of active ingredient as dust.
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