What is the best way to give my cat pain medication?

As for the options at home, oftentimes those will be oral medications. We may give something injectable in the clinic or in the hospital, but to go home, we usually give oral medications.

By mouth is the most consistent way to get pain medication into the cat as far as absorption and things like that go. But we do, of course, do some injections in the hospital. There's transdermal, which means you rub it on the skin, and it gets absorbed through the skin, but there is a little more variability with that type of medication delivery. Just as a warning, when it's transdermal, you need to wear gloves when you're putting it on your cat because you'll get some too, and you don't need it. The kitty does.