Here a hairball, there a hairball, everywhere a freakin' hairball!

The BBQ Pit
1

I’m drowning in hairballs!
I SWEAR, everytime I turn around, I’m stepping on another cold, slimy pile of yacked-up hair! Yes, I KNOW I own 5 cats, but come on! It never was this bad before! It seems like every freakin’ day if it’s not Pippa, then it’s Twinkle, if it’s not Twinkle, then it’s Cadillac! Why is there so much yacking going on? And WHY did Cadillac have to yack in my shoe? My relatively new, $50, nice shoe? Why couldn’t he have picked one of my old tennis shoes? I mean really! I TOLD them never to barf in my shoes again!

And if they’re not having problems with one end, they’re having problems with the other! I keep finding cling nuggets all over the place as well. Olli, the spazkitty, will get out of the litterbox, realize he’s got a clingon, and then sprint through the house like he’s been shot from a cannon, causing the nugget to go hurling through space and bounce around before falling to the floor. Then Pippa comes downstairs, does that little “take two steps, sit down, take a step, sit down” walk, that means she’s got a cling nugget. So I take her upstairs, and shut us up in the bathroom. Sure enough, she’s got a clinger. And OF COURSE, because she’s a long-haired cat, and she sat down a couple times, her butt hair has kindof woven itself into the nugget a little bit. So I call my husband in to hold her, and Pippa starts fussing and bitching, then she starts to pee! There’s a reason her nickname is “Bitcha”! So I leave her in the bathroom to settle down for a few minutes, then go in there with a wet rag and pull the nugget out amid much screaming on her part. When I open the bathroom door, three of the cats are standing there with huge scared eyes, wondering what I’m doing to Pippa.

Damn you hairballs! You go to hell and you die! I swear, I’m about to get out my bottle of Nair and put it on the cats, or at least partially shave them-especially their butts! Anything to stop the goddamn hairballs. The cats we had when I was a kid would throw up these nice, neat somewhat-dry pods of hair that were easy to dispose of. Of course, the cats I have now have to walk around the house leaving little piles of spittle behind them.

Ah well, another day, another 3,000 hairballs to clean up.

2

Hey, at least you haven’t got a puker. One of my cats, when he was a kitten, used to eat so fast that he made himself sick. Every freaking morning. And he wouldn’t be considerate and barf on the vinyl kitchen floor. Of course not. After scarfing down his breakfast like a half-starved frat boy, he’d casually lick his chops, saunter out onto the white living room carpet, crouch carefully down and yak it all back up.

Then he’d eat his own puke. I guess he wanted a hot meal.

3

Ohhhh, one of my cats eats her own puke- and the other cat’s if she can get it! In fact, that’s how I knew she was sick one time, because she was laying around a lot more than usual, and she threw up and then didn’t try to eat it!
And she wonders why I rarely let her give me kisses…

4

Cling nugget? What the hell is a cling nugget? It’s called a dingleberry. Get it right.

:smiley:

5

Man, I was having a really bad day, but this line made up for it. I snorted out loud. Thanks!

Zette

6

Just to try and be helpful, my cats (3 of them) used to have a lot of problems with hairballs and puking. We switched them from your everyday commercial brands (Friskies, Meow Mix, etc.) to Science Diet Hairball Control and Sensitive Stomach varieties, and it worked miracles. They rarely puke or hack up hairballs now. Part of it is due to the fact that Science Diet uses fewer cereal fillers and more digestible meat products in their foods. It’s a little more expensive, but it’s worth it.

We also bought one of those little handheld carpet cleaning machines so that when they do occassionally puke, we can easily clean it out of the carpet.

7

My cat doesn’t puke hairballs; he poops it out. Furry cat poop is far preferable to furry puke. I appreciate this oddity - it’s the first cat I’ve owned that does this.

8

Good advice, PLD. We use Science Diet, too. And when the kitten grew up he learned to eat slower. No more yakking.

My wife and I both have very long hair. We learned that one of my cats likes to eat human hair when his poop came out like a string of pearls.

You’re very welcome, madame. I live to serve. :smiley:

9

Maybe I should try a bag o’ that there hairball food. At least for a couple of my cats. They all get fed different stuff, because they’re different ages. The 2 younger ones get Purina ONE, and PippaBitcha gets Purina Mature Cat because she’s 8 years old, and the oldest cat eats canned food because she has trouble eating the crunchy stuff (Fancy Feast only, NOT sliced or chunky, the kind that looks like pate, and only certain flavors, don’t get me started), and my husband’s cat gets a food that prevents UTI because he got blocked once when he was younger. Although I don’t know why this food says it’s good for preventing UTI when it’s tuna and egg flavored- when I worked for a vet I learned that fish can cause UTIs and we always told people to switch their cats off of the seafood-flavored stuff if their cats had a problem.
I also worry about maintaining their weight, and I was thinking before, “Why give them a hairball diet when they only have problems with hairballs in the summer?” but it’s been pretty hairy around here (pun intended) lately.

Thanks for the advice, pld!

10

The solution is to not let the cats eat their hair in the first place. You gotta Shop-Vac those kitties!

11

Bwahaahaa! That’s a good 'un.

Actually, take the time to brush them at least a little. The fur lines their throat as they clean themselves and they then proceed to hack it up when it gets too much. Brushing will help, I’m pretty sure.

I have a long hair cat that I brush pretty thoroughly at least once a month and I can only remember 3 or 4 hairballs in the 6 years we’ve had him.

12

I heartily recommend the Science Diet Hairball Control/Sensitive Stomach formulas too. One of my guys throws up at the drop of a hat, and in the hat probably. One thing though, I noticed that for the first couple of weeks when I started him on the SD food he threw up even more than usual. It may be switching his food that did that even though I did it gradually. But now he’s fine. They’ve got low magnesium content so are safe for cats with urinary problems like my oldest feline has.

And if anyone ever figures out why cats choose to yak up where they do please, please tell me. I’ve seen my tabby go racing out of the kitchen (nice, easy-to-clean linoleum) and down the hall to throw up on the carpet there. And not just one pile either. No, he has to barf… walk a couple of steps…barf again… and so on. Nice little trail all through the house. Yeesh.

13

If you can manage to squirt water on your cat’s bum when she has a dingleberry, you might be able to induce her to clean herself up. And I third the Science Diet Hairball food - both of our cats prefer it to any other food.

14

moggy, one way to eliminate hairballs is to feed a teaspoon of pumpkin every day. The canned variety you find in the grocery stores works just fine. Even my vet recommends this. I mix it in with my kitties’ dinner of canned food; and I can’t recall them harfing up any furballs.

It’s a natural laxative and will help your kitties to ‘exit’ the furballs into their ‘poo’. Not into your shoes!

The dingleberry issue can be resolved with a ‘sanitary clip’. I don’t find this necessary with my short-haired cat, but the three long hairs have this done by my groomer every six weeks or so. She trims the area around their britches; and only charges me a nominal sum. It’s worth it to me, I hate picking up ‘poo nuggets’.

dwyr, how long has your cat been throwing up? Have you considered a food allergy? Your cat may need a different diet. Read the labels on the bags/cans of cat food. Ground corn or corn meal is bad for kitties. They need protein. Meat (not by-products) should be at least the first ingredient. If you see any grain as the first product, give it a good leaving alone. If you do make any changes to your cats’ diet, do it gradually. Sudden changes can cause tummy upsets.

Just some advice from an obsessed cat lover.

15

The easiest way to stop hairballs is to brush your cats (with a brush). I’m sure I pulled off at least one hairball’s worth, each time I brushed my kitty.

16

One word:

Shellac

17

pldennison,
On that advice (above) I bought some Science Diet hairball formula. It was about double the price of regular food, but with only one cat (and she has really long hair) it’s definately worth it.

Thanks for the tip.

Zette

18

I’ve considered the ‘sanitary clip’ before with Pippa. It’s funny, she’s a long-haired cat, and she’s the one with the most yacking/cling nugget problems. Only problem is, she’s a bitch! She is the cliche that you always hear about- she only wants lovin’ on HER terms, thinks she’s the Queen of Everything, if you try to pick her up when she’s not in the mood, she gets all grumpy, and I can’t do a goddamn thing with her. She HATES being messed with- I can’t brush her, I have to literally sit on her to trim her nails- and even then, I can only get one paw done at a time. Once when I took her to the vet’s for an exam, she was so angry that she pissed and shit right there on the exam table! She will SCREAM when I try to do stuff to her, and she’s the only cat that has intentionally hurt me (she bit my heel once when we were wrasslin’ over nugget removal).

Why do I keep her? Because I don’t get rid of animals just because it’s hard to take care of them. She’s a living being, not an object to throw away, and I made a commitment to take care of her and I will honor that. She can’t help the way she is, because during the time when she should have been socialized, she was locked in a bedroom with her littermates and never had much contact with humans.

I think I’m going to buy some of that Hairball Diet. Most of my other cats don’t really like to be brushed, but they will let me do it a little bit. I also have Laxatone, and 2 of them will lick it off my finger, and the others I grab and stick some to the roof of their mouth.