Tapering off prednisolone

Hello, my cat was prescribed to take prednisolone for his anemia in the discharge papers it says “do not stop abruptly” I was wondering how to taper off the steroid. He’s been taking 2.5 mg twice a day for the past 4 days and I currently have 12 more pills left. I was wondering when should I start tapering and how should I go about it?

Hello!  Anaemia is a condition meaning low numbers of red blood cells, but it can have all kinds of causes, only a specific few of which are treated by steroids.  Did the vet mean for the patient to take a few steroids and for you to taper the dose yourself?  It seems possible that they'd want a call or a revisit to see whether treatment was successful, for instance.  Because you are not sure and the label doesn't specify, the first thing I'd do in your position is to call the vets, to find out what was intended (it should be in the clinical notes if your usual vet isn't in for some reason).   Perhaps they left coming off the drug open-ended because they wanted to assess the patient's response before deciding?   Perhaps they needed to check what was happening to the red blood cells in a few days?  I don't know of many causes of anaemia that would resolve after a few days steroid without requiring a follow-up, but your vet will obviously know the case better than I do and understand what they are treating, so should be able to give you the appropriate and specific answer to your question.