My cat suffered from an arthritic joint after an injury. The symptom he
showed was sometimes refusing to get up, and indicating that it hurt when he
moved. The vet recommended a chondroiten and glucosamine supplement, and he
hasn't exhibited any symptoms since I started giving this to him. So it's a
good idea. I tried several sources of chondroiten/glucosamine. First I found
some liquid meant for horses, and it smelled sort of like apples, and I just
shot a small syringe full of this stuff into the cat's mouth every day. He
didn't like that much, but it wasn't traumatic, and it did the trick. Later
I switched to Cosequin for Cats, pulling apart a capsule and sprinkling it
in his canned food and mixing it up. That seemed to work okay. Later I tried
a cat treat item, figuring it would be easiest if I could just feed him a
couple of treats that he would actually enjoy, instead of mixing stuff in
his food. However, he didn't seem to like the treats very much, so I went
back to Cosequin. In summary, I've tried a few things, and Cosequin
sprinkled in wet food is the best, and easiest-to-administer, solution I've
found so far.

FYI, This is the URL of the cat treats which I tried and abandoned:

http://zukes.com/cats/hipaction/index.html