My cat throws up at least once a day. Why? I feed him good, decent food and he doesn’t hunt mice, or anything. Can someone please tell me the cause of this and possibly give me some advice as to how to prevent it. Please! My carpet can’t take much more!
Yes someone can. They are veterinarians.
The SDMB is a bad place to get specific medical advice. Even for kitty.
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I’ll second that one.
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If you haven’t already thought about it, it’s probably hairballs.
A friend of mine recently had this problem with his year-old cat - turned out to be a food allergy, which cleared up after the cat’s diet was changed.
However, that diagnosis was arrived at after a series of visits to the vet to make sure that there wasn’t some other cause, like the feline equivalent of Crohn’s disease (which would have required steroid shots or some such for the remainder of the cat’s life).
So it would probably be best if you touched base with a vet on this. If the potential cost of the visit is daunting, ask if there isn’t a way to spread the payment out - most vets I know would accept this arrangement, and your cat would be getting the care it needs. Good luck, and let us know what happens!
I know that the board isn’t the place for medical advice! I’ve taken the cat to the vet and the vet can’t find anything wrong with my cat. He says that cats just throw up a lot.
I was hoping someone would have a grain of advice considering my vet is useless in this field.
First suggestion, try another vet.
Or if you really want lay opinions, we’ll need more detail. Does your cat go outside? My boy Pumpkin eats grass whenever he goes out and waits until he comes back in to throw up. If you see bits of grass in your cat’s egestion, don’t worry, it’s standard cat behavior.
Is he throwing up slightly digested food or does the barf look more cigar shaped? Does he give you any kind of warning he’s going to throw up? Pumpkin often makes a peculiar cry when hacking up a hairball, giving us time to shove a newspaper down in front of him. He usually manages to miss it, anyway.
If it’s cigar-shaped or just dense and fuzzy, and the cat makes rather a production of it, it’s probably a hairball. You can reduce the occurrence of these in a couple of ways - try looking at some cat sites for suggestions. Here’s a site that teaches you how to make your own hairball! Guaranteed to break the ice at parties.
If your cat isn’t throwing up grass or hair, you need to find a vet who will listen to you, and you’ll have to provide more than “the cat throws up a lot” by way of symptoms.
How much are you feeding him? Do you limit what he eats, or pour a bowl of food and let him go to town, instead of giving him small amounts over the course of the day? ALL cats (lions, tigers, & tabbys) will eat, and eat, and EAT until they are so full they can’t move. This is a survival instinct (eat while the food is here) and you can’t breed or train this out of them. Maybe he is over full. I doubt hair balls would make him puke every single day. I’ve had cats for years, and all of them spewed because of over eating. Good luck!
My one cat also throws up a lot, although it’s more like once or twice a week. It is almost always food that has not been digested at all (i.e. still had the shape of the original dry cat food). She must be keeping some food down, because she is average weight.
This has been happening since I have had her (3 years, got her as an adult). I asked my vet about it, but she had no idea why it would be happening, unless my cat was eating too fast or eating non-food items. I do occasionally see her chewing plastic, but even when she doesn’t get plastic, she still seems to puke regularly.
I always thought maybe it was an emotional/mental thing. Is this possible?
Alias, I hope I didn’t come off as a snob. It wasn’t intended, but I can see how my post might have come off that way. The problem (as I see it as another poster) is that this board gets a lot of “Why is my body doing this wierd thing?” type posts. It would be irresponsible for anyone here to give advice; the laypeople don’t have the training and the experts don’t want to misdiagnose based on insufficient knowledge (to put it mildly.)
The problem might be hairballs, diet, disease, or who knows what. To get an idea of the scope of the problem, check here (The vomiting section is about two-thirds of the way down the page.) You might want to make up a plan of attack with your vet. That, or maybe see another vet.
For what it’s worth, we’ve got a long hair cat with a sensitive stomach. If we feed him chicken instead of fish or forget the Petromalt, we get the same thing.
Good luck.
Possibly you might be feeding your cat food that is too cold. I used to frequently put the skin from defrosted chicken down for my cats to eat and frequently if it wasn’t quite defrosted up it would come.
I have heard of people with cats with sensitive stomachs who have the same problem with cat food fed straight from the fridge and its also worth remembering that cats dont like to eat cold food anyway.
You’ve gotten some very good advice from the other posters, and I’d like to weigh in on the side of consulting another vet. I know that even if he could not make a specific diagnosis, my vet would have at least prescribed a general treatment for ‘gastroenteritis’ to see if that solved the problem. It’s not always possible to specifically identify the problem, so vets do a lot of ‘treating the symptoms’. Usually works, too.
As others have said, there could be a lot of reasons why your cat is vomiting - it could be as simple as changing the way you feed or it could be a more serious problem. Your vet should be willing to explore the possibilities and work with you to solve this.
FWIW, it doesn’t sound like hairballs, unless your cat has an intestinal blockage. Hairball vomiting is usually sporadic, not something that occurs on a daily basis.
BTW, I’ve worked as an assistant in a vet clinic for 4 years, made it half-way through vet-tech school (might eventually be able to afford to finish), and have bred pedigreed cats for 5 years. I hope this lends a little weight to the suggestion to consult another veterinarian.
One of my two cats has a similar problem. When questioned, my vet said that it’s natural for otherwise healthy cats to do this. Apparently, upon finding a source of food, cats in the wild will ingest as much of it as possible, then move to a safe place and throw it up in order to consume it at their leisure. Or possibly to feed a litter of kittens, I suppose.
Some house cats retain part of that behavior; they gorge themselves in order to induce the vomiting, but since they probably consider most of the house “safe,” they’ll vomit just anywhere. On your carpet, for instance. I’m not sure how one could prevent it. I gathered that it was some sort of instinctual behavior.
Of course, I’m not sure how accurate this is, though I presume my vet knows what he’s talking about. It would be a good idea to consult your own vet and rule out any health issues, though. Good luck.
Based on your info, and barring some serious medical condition I am not qualified to say anything about: it sounds like you cat is eating too fast… My older Bengal- Rajah- does this sometime when he gets liver, his fave. He eats so fast he harfs right afterwards. It comes up not looking very digested, and very soon after eating. Does this sound like it? If so, switch to dry food (a good brand, try science diet if you can’t get Calif Natural, but there are others), with SMALL amounts of canned as a “treat”. Hair balls are the other guess, but others have written about them, above.
My cat throws up TOTALLY whole food that looks like it just came from the package! I feed him dry food, and occasionally a tiny bit of chicken or fish. I know it’s not hairballs… hairballs don’t look like Meow Mix.
Thanks for the advice guys, my vet just told me the other day that he thinks my cat is just totally pigging out.
I have a cat with same problem. She yacks up almost completely undigested food. The vet says she is otherwise in great shape, and the puking is probably because she eats too fast.
Here is the cool part: the vet suggested putting a couple of golf balls in her feeding dish, so she has to eat around them, thus slowing down her snarfing of the kibble.
I started doing this about two weeks ago, and I have noticed a distinct decline in the messes on my carpets. Might be worth a shot.
That’s a great idea, Barney. Although if you happen to own a Bengal cat, you’ll probably find the golf balls in the water dish and the cat eating as he pleases.
Throwing up undigested food is usually caused by one of three things - gorging, food allergy, or intestinal blockage. Since this seems to be an ongoing problem, the cat doesn’t show any other signs of illness, and has been examined by a vet, you can be pretty sure it’s not an intestinal blockage, which should have resulted in a seriouis illness in a very short time.
Gorging can be dealt with in several ways - Barney’s golf balls are a wonderful idea for dry food. Also, feeding smaller amounts in several small meals per day, or allowing free access to dry food at all times, will result in a more natural eating pattern for the cat. Also, make sure the cat has a secure, private spot to eat. A cat that is worried about having the dog or another cat steal its food, or that the kids will pull its tail, or that it will get stepped on, or the food picked up and put away before it has finished eating, is likely to gulp its food down whole.
Food allergies are a little more complicated, and you really should consult your veterinarian on this. I have cats that can’t eat any dairy product (cat milk, cheese, etc.) - it will come right back up. Most of my cats can’t eat Friskies cat food - they seem to be allergic to the dye, as their stools will also turn a funny color after eating it. (Other people’s cats eat it just fine - my cats are mostly related and this is probably an inherited condition.) But, you might try buying a premium food that doesn’t contain any artificial coloring or flavoring, and that is mostly chicken or lamb, with very little cereal added.
I once sold a kitten that developed a peculiar problem. He had been raised on Iams kitten food and went to his new home with a sample bag. A couple of months later the owners decided to try him on the Iams adult food, and he began vomiting about 30 minutes after eating. Their vet checked him for everything under the sun, including x-rays and fluoroscopy. The kitten was even hospitalized for a short time, during which he was given fluids, antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, and - Iams kitten food. The kitten stopped vomiting and started eating well and was sent back home, where he shortly started vomiting again. The vet was contemplating exploratory surgery as the next step, and the owners called me in desperation. My first question was ‘what are you feeding him’?. Since the problem seemed to have started with the diet change, I told them to put him back on the kitten food and see what happened. Voila! Cured kitty!
Now, there is absolutely no reason in hell why the kitten should have had a problem with the adult food - heck, it was just the adult version of what they were already feeding him. The vet never even suggested trying this because, well, it didn’t make any sense. 
I only suggested it because the vet had done everything else, and this was the only change that had been made. Weird.