I’ve found that if you hold the cat in your lap, use the finger and thumb of one hand to wiggle on either side of their face where their mouth begins to open their mouth, if you can then get the pill on the very furthest part of their tongue closest to their throat, there is an automatic reflex to swallow. I used to try putting it in their food and it never worked. This worked every time.
Definitely the Bobiverse books. Engineer in the 21st century dies, but paid to have himself cryogenically frozen. 200 years in the future, Christian fundamentalist seized control of the government and made it illegal to revive people like him. The world is on the brink of nuclear apocolypse so they used new technology to upload his consciousness into a spaceship computer to search the galaxy for a habitat planet for humanity. Spaceship has auto-factories onboard that let him replicate more ships and digital clones of himself. It has some serious parts, but it is written in a lighthearted manner with some technical explanation for future technology.