Ok back story - I took Loki to the vet last month and we were complaining that he was vomiting a lot - we feed him Royal Cannie Expensive Siamese Diet. He was doing fine for a while with some mishaps here and there…mostly vomiting early in the morning 4:30-ish.
His vomit consisted of the contents of his stomach…then just liquid, then foam.
Doctor gave him an injection of steroids I think, then switched to science diet sensitive stomach…he was great for a month. We brought him for a followup and doc said continue the science diet and he should be fine…Well here we are 2 weeks later and he is puking again. Same thing, the contents of his last meal, then liquid, then foam…
My wife did a little web diagnosing and this can be caused from stress…Our female siamese who outweighs loki by a good several pounds likes to torment him. It’s not uncommon for us to come home and find him under the bed and her resting on the kat condo with a sheepish grin as if to say…
I didn’t do anything…
SO what should we do? We don’t want to take him to the doc every month for an injection if we don’t have to. What gives? Could this all be from stress? Should we switch him back to royal canine because hewas doing well with that? Could he be eating something from the basement and puking? Wouldn’t we be seeing it?
His behaviour has not changed, no fever, and personality wise he’s spot on.
My advice would be to get a definitive diagnosis. Do diagnostic tests either through your veterinarian, or an internal medicine specialist, and give the problem a name. I have seen intermittent vomiting due to Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Intestinal adenocarcinoma, mesenteric lymphoma, dietary sensitivity, partial obstruction, etc, etc.
You need to know what you are addressing in order to do it successfully.
One additional note. It is not unusual for a vomiting cat to be within the range of normal for the species. Cats vomit very easily. Compared to cats, dogs require more effort to vomit, and horses, at the other extreme, basically cannot vomit. My concern with your cat is the fact that you are seeing food/water/froth. Cats that vomit because they are cats, typically bring up partially digested food, or hair.
About once a year our cat will start making wheezing noises and vomit foam and liquid (sometimes with kibble in it, depending on when he ate last). He’ll do it for a couple of days, and eventually a hairball comes up (it looks like a cylindrical piece of felt). After that, he’s fine.
We do give him hairball treatment treats, but his fur is so damn thick (he’s an indoor/outdoor cat) he still produces one once a year.
[anecdote] One of our 4 cats, Tallulah, regularly ralphs. She has the longest hair of any of our cats, and is also the only one who occosionally becomes visibly purrturbed (:D) at her fate of being a housecat (as opposed to being free to go outside to sniff the daisies and be eaten by any of the handful of neighbor’s dogs that loiter around our house). However, there does not seem to be any rhyme or reason to her ralphing. It just happens randomly once or twice a week, and she then continues on her merry way. Sometimes it is frothy nothingness, and sometimes it is catfood. I’ve never noticed any hairballs. [/anecdote]
Well, I am not an equine veterinarian, so I’ll say up front that I am not 100% on this. The equine stomach is (comparatively) very small (8 - 15 liters). It is entirely intrathoracic, so abdominal press doesn’t come into play (ever strain your abdominal muscles while vomiting?). There may also be some differences in the esophageal sphincter musculature. Also, the cardiac sphincter is very well developed (“cardiac” is a region of the stomach) and blocks material from leaving the stomach and entering the esophagus.
That said, rabbits are also unable to vomit. I once asked a well-known exotics veterinarian why rabbits are unable to vomit, and her reply was, “They just can’t, OK?”. :dubious:
is there a way the cats can be separated unless you are with them?
i had one cat that i had to keep sep. due to stress. she was too scared to go to the litter box or any other room because of the other cat. she would wait until nod the naughty went to sleep then slink around the house.
i decided she would stay in the library alone until i got home. then i would go in with her for a half hour, just the two of us (play time and cuddles) door would be closed. then i would let the door stay open until i left for work the next day. so she could sleep with me if she wanted.