OT: Cat throwing up food

[michl43]

For past two days I've come home from work to find a hill of cat food throw up on the floor. ARIEL (4 yrs) likes the trader joes low sodium turkey so I cut up a very small amount and give that in the morning. She has a good quality dry food always in a bowl. She does not like any cat wet food. In the early evening I again give a very small amount of turkey. Does anyone have advice? TIA

[dutchgirl]

I would go to the vet and get it checked out. Vomiting could mean many different things and I think it would be irresponsible for anyone but a vet to help you make sense of it.

Just my two cents! Hope kitty gets better soon!

[BunnyHop]

I agree, it's a good idea to get some advice from a qualified professional.

Maybe it's just a fur ball, maybe he ate something that disagreed with him, maybe he's got some other issue that needs medical intervention. No real way to know without seeing a vet. Better safe than sorry.

I used to have a cat that threw up all the time, and we never could find a cause, and just attributed it to fur balls. In his old age, I switched him to a kidney care type food, and he quit the puking altogether. I suspect he was sensitive to something in the food he'd been eating that didn't trouble him enough to require medical intervention, and we just never isolated the cause. (He lived to be about 20, never seemed to have any malnutrition issues, FWIW.)

[mtnmom]

Yes, I agree, take her to the vet. My cat, Shadow, started throwing up his food more and more often and started losing weight. I took him to the vet and he was diagnosed with Inflammatory Bowel Disease. We now give him a 1/4 pill of Pepcid once a day in a pill pocket (which is a treat to him!) and he's given special food from the vet.

No more throwing up.

We had a pet sitter watch him when we were away for a couple of weeks and I gave her the option of skipping the Pepcid. It proved to be key to his treatment. She said she walked in to a mound of throw-up the first day, so gave him his special "treat" daily and he was fine after that. I don't know if the hypo-allergenic food could be replaced with off the shelf stuff like we used to get, but I don't want to take chances.

[michl43]

If it continues I'll take her to vet. I suspect she's eating too fast or too much. Can anyone tell me how to portion control of the dry food? She is age 4, quite active, and has a heavy build (14 lbs).

[BunnyHop]

I'm sorry, I've never tried to portion control food before, just left dry food available and let them regulate things for themselves. I don't remember having to fill the bowl very often though.

I do remember my old cat went totally nuts for Meow Mix and got fat, but all I had to do to stop that was to put him back on a different brand. (He seems to have had a sensitive tummy, and I think the MM wasn't helping, so we had more than one reason to switch.)

[Yoyogirl72]

I have a kitty who inhales his food and then stares at me to give him more. He is overweight too so to get him to work for his food I bought this cat food ball dispenser off of amazon. It takes him 30 minutes at least to eat now. I also have a battery operated feeder that I use if I'm traveling. It has 5 bowls in it that you could use daily to give frequent small meals. I bought that off amazon as well. (I'm an amazon junkie . Here's the link for the ball.

http://www.amazon.com/PetSafe-SlimCa..._petsupplies_2

I also think you should take your kitty to the vet if this doesn't get better soon. I had a cat that threw up a lot and he ended up diagnosed with mast cell neoplasia. Cat vomiting can be from so many different things. Best to get him checked out.

[txfitmom]

I cannot give one of my cats any kind of people food because he has such a sensitive stomach. Once I let him eat some lunchmeat or something and then he was severely throwing up for several days and I had to take him to the vet to get IV fluids. Never again. He also was sick about 5 months ago with similar issues again and they did some blood work and found his liver enzymes were elevated. I did a little research and decided to change his cat food. I was feeding my cats Science Diet, but I think they have a lot of additives that are actually questionable. I switched him to Blue Buffalo Sensitive Stomach and have not had any more issues since then. In fact, cannot remember the last time my cats threw up or had a hairball.

[michl43]

Thanks all! I just ran to petco & got hills diet sensitive stomach dry food.... But may exchange it for Blue Buffalo tomorrow... Hope it helps.

[LauraBella]

Calico did this as a stress response for a while. (She's a very high strung kitty...who at the time lived with four dogs....) If this is a pattern, def agree: talk to the vet.