I took the bigger dose from the study on longevity in dogs that resulted in improved heart indices, only their week dose was divided into 3 portions given to dogs Monday, Wednesday and Friday or sth like this. So they gave .1 mg per kg in their big dose sample. I dose once a week so .3 mg per kg. If the next scan shows it is not enough, I will increase. If I see improvement, we will just go on. He is doing very well at the moment. Even slightly put on weight (in muscles, he is very athletic). Funny thing is: he is a canadian sphynx and he is growing much more fuzz at the moment. If it goes on like this I will end up with a long-hair sphynx. ;). In February we are doing blood test check and I will have a comparison with his previous ones as I do his check-up at least once a year. More if he is ill. But he usually is not. Apart from HCM, but even this is still asymptotic (if recently too progressed to sit and do nothing about it).
Do not use rapamune in liquid as there is alcohol in it. One off - maybe it would not be enough to lead to problems, but taking into account how sensitive cats are to alcohol it is best to not risk regular doses with it. We bought it and now we are using it ourselves and he is on pills that we bought later.
There are no cat studies - but you may want to follow the dosing used in the dog studies: How Do I Get Rapamycin for My Dog?
Also - I don’t think you want to “pill split” with rapamycin because there is an enteric coating for most of them, and breaking that coating would likely eliminate the bioavailabilty (because the coating allows it to get through the stomach to the small intestine where it is ultimately absorbed. Powdered rapamycin typically has very, very low bioavailability (getting destroyed in the gut).
Then how would you recommend one gives a smaller dose of rapamycin to their cats? I have two cats and only 1mg tablets, so what would be a good way to give them both 0.5mg without breaking the pill?
I thought about crushing the pills down and mixing it in with some of their wet food, but now after what you said it seems that it wouldn’t really do anything for them since they will have low bioavailability.
What you may want to do is what people are doing… dose higher than the standard dosing at one time, but then increase the time between doses.
Many people are taking higher levels of rapamycin (for example Bryan Johnson is taking 13mg of rapamycin every two weeks). Bryan Johnson's Longevity Protocol - Your Thoughts?
This is compared to the normal longevity dosing for males of around 6mg , once per week.
There is no reason why the same approach could not be used in pets: What is the Rapamycin Dose / Dosage for Anti-Aging or Longevity?
Because my dog is relatively small (24 lbs) and the tablets are all in 1mg portions, I give my dog 3mg every two weeks or so now.
I ask because the 1mg tablets would be hard to get the cat to swallow, instead of mixing it in food crushed up/powdered. Its easy for a dog to just swallow it with a treat, but cats are different.
Ah, I thought cats would eat pretty much the same way dogs do. My dog, and I think perhaps most dogs, really don’t chew things much. I put the rapamycin tablets inside a small cube of cheese (using a knife to cut a small incision in the side of the cheese, then tucking the tablet inside that incision). My dog basically just swallows it whole.
I have no experience with cats. Perhaps someone can test this approach out, or try other similar approaches, and see what works best, and report back on what doesn’t work and what does work.
Given the well-documented bioavailability issues with powdered/unencapsulated rapamycin, I’m pretty sure you don’t just want to crush the tablets and mix with the food.
Perhaps covering the tablet with a delectable cat-treat (peanut butter?) might work? Does anyone else have any ideas? The smaller the animal gets, the more this becomes a problem.
The original NIA ITP studies on rapamycin were delayed for many months when they first discovered this bioavailability problem (the rapamycin is destroyed in the stomach) when they were starting the mouse trials. They ended up developing a custom/expensive method of encapsulating the rapamycin powder (now named E-rapa) in tiny . The rapamycin researchers out of Texas (Rodney Strong and David Sharp) ended up forming a small company just to produce this eRapa that was used in all the rapamycin mouse trials.
Since then the company seems to have gotten additional funding and are trying to expand their market - but I spoke with Matt Kaeberlein at the Longevity Summit in December, 2022 about this company as I saw that they are now doing human clinical trials with their eRapa product (see here ) but that seemed a little odd to me, as functionally it seems that this version of eRapa is basically the same as the Rapamune and generic rapamycin tablets that all had slightly different methods of getting around the bioavailability problem. Matt agreed, there didn’t seem to be any functional difference between eRapa and the regular human-use rapamycin tablets. Historically the key benefit of eRapa was that there were very small granules that were encapsulated and that could be mixed in with mouse chow. But - the company charges a lot of this product, (very small volume I’m sure) - so its only used in mouse and other small animal research studies.
More information on the company behind eRapa: https://emtorabio.com/
I am not a cat fan.
But we had cats on meds as a kid and we would open their mouths and shove the pill down with the end of an eraser on a pencil. Worked!
Maybe dose the pill with a bit of wet cat food to make it more palatable.
Yes? Too mean?
Happy to say the clinical study with rapa on cats with hcm is now finalised and report should be available soon. On TriviumVet website they published today a video with Joshua Stern from UC Davis taking about it.
My cat is taking 1 mg pill without any issues at all. He swallows is whole with a snack, no chewing. Easy. 
if normal snacks do not work, try easy pills. 90 percent of cats will swallow absolutely everything coated by this malarkey.
How do you give it to him? Any hiding it in food? Or covering it in something that tastes good?
I hide it in a snack. A piece of cats’ “sausage” stick rubbish from supermarket by webbox. Not great ingredients but soft enough to hide the pill. And easy pill works wonders, too.
Is this what you’re talking about regarding “easy pill”? I’m not familiar with it:
Use the tiny amount. No need to give a lot.
Who cares if you are not a cat fan?
I have one cat who will swallow it whole no problem, and my other one refuses to eat it regardless of method I try. He just wont eat it
You probably have a solution by now. But, here is what I use:Amazon.com : FELINE GREENIES PILL POCKETS for Cats Natural Soft Cat Treats
Just pick the flavor your cats like.
I will check it out, thanks! I am working on getting one of my cats to eat it, as he refuses regardless of what I try.
You can lead a cat to rapamycin but you can’t make him eat