nursing the non-cooperative sick sucks

[ratcreature]

Having a rat on three oral meds plus a wound salve application twice a day gets old real fast. I decided to give the painkiller and the antibiotic in the morning (I asked the vet that it's okay to mix them) and the decongestant in the evening. Perhaps I could mix that in as well, and have only one application, but the more fluid I give orally, the bigger the likelihood that it just goes out of the mouth again, and the decongestant has a sort of fuzzy "mix with water" dosage, that the vet said I could give in the drinking water too, but I offer multiple bottles and the others would drink it, so it's better to give it directly as well.

The salve application is not that bad, though unfortunately the salve doesn't seem to taste bad, so it gets licked off, and not just by the rat its on. Why couldn't they make the oral antibiotics tasty rather than the topical?

Also I removed damp (i.e. peed on) bedding twice today, to make really sure that they won't sleep in their wet spots, in the hope that this will help with the bumblefoot sores. (Why rats insist on peeing in their sleeping spaces when their skin is too delicate to take the aggravation of the wet bedding is a mystery, though.) I also put in some more washable floor cloths, so they have more even softer surfaces than newspaper.