Prolabs Cat Tape Worm Tabs Warning

I write a lot about our dogs.  I really should include a bit about our cats too.

Meet Sassy and Leo Pard.   Sassy is scowling at Leo, who is wearing the sweater.

Sassy belonged to a good friend of ours in Norwalk.  She got into a situation where she couldn't keep Sassy in her apartment, and Sassy was stuck living in a crate at the vet's office where she works.  We were overrun with mice in our rental Unabomber Cabin, and so Sassy came to live with us.  For the record, she is a champion mouser.

Pam was in the barn feeding Jeremiah the Horse a few months ago when she heard meowing from up in the loft.  The next thing she knew, Mr. Pard was on her shoulder, purring up a storm.  The next thing I knew, we had another cat.  Leo is also a champion mouser, birder, and anything else that moves that is small.

So what's the deal with the sweater?  I used to take Ruby to work with me every day from the time when she was a small puppy.  The furnace broke and I only had a small electric heater, so I bought that sweater for Ruby.  She hated wearing it, but soon outgrew it anyway.  Pam happened to find it in the dogs' toy box and put it on Leo.  Leo was less than pleased, as you can see, but he was a good sport and let Pam put it on.

Catching so many mice, Sassy caught a bad case of tape worms.  I picked up this bottle of tape worm pills at our local Tractor Supply.  The bottle comes with three pills.  Pam and I looked everywhere on the bottle and the instructions inside.   Amazingly, there was no dosage instructions.  Anywhere.

Pam ground up one pill in a bit of canned cat food, a real treat that our cats never get.  Like the dogs, they get dry food.  The next day, we were debating whether to give Sassy another pill.  Three pills, one a day?  I decided to google the company, but the print on the bottle was so small that I couldn't read the company's name.  Lacking a magnifying glass, I took a photo of the bottle and blew it up.  Prolabs.  I then googled for instructions, and what I found was very unsettling.  The dosage is one pill.  That's it.  And actually, if your cat is four pounds or less, the dosage is a half a pill.  If your cat contracts worms again, you have to wait 30 days before the next dose.  Otherwise, your cat will overdose and possibly die.

I didn't find this information on the Prolabs website.  I found it on an internet message board, where someone posted who actually called the company.  I'm not the only one outraged.  Many people are.

How can a drug company be so careless?  So incompetent?  So... stupid?

Tape worms are common in cats that eat mice, since many mice have tape worms.  It is also easily spread to other animals through feces.  I wonder how many pets have been lost due to poor instructions on medications?