I have four cats. Two of them are brothers. The brothers throw up ALL the freaking time. I mean it’s not even funny. They throw up if I don’t feed them right away. They throw up when I finally do feed them after having to wait. They even throw up for the hell of it. Anywhere from 0-4 times a day there is the sound of a cat retching. It’s driving me crazy. They’re three years old and have always been like this. I’ve had them checked out for parasites and they’re clean. Give them hairball stuff to make sure it’s not that. Even tried changing their food to something less rich. I think they just like to vomit, seriously.
And what’s worse…I’m moving in a month. Right now I live in a place with all hardwood floors so it’s not TOO much trouble to clean it up. But my new place is basically all carpet. So not only will I have to run to beat the dog and baby to the pile of vomit, I’ll also have to do double duty cleaning it off carpet! :smack: Damn cats…wish they weren’t so cute and lovable!
Do they eat kibble & are they allowed to free-feed on it?
My mum’s old cat Tuktuk used to eat her kibble like it was going to be taken away from her. Then it’d swell in her stomach. And she’d hurk it back up again, most pieces whole.
They’re on free feed dry food because if the food isn’t there when they want to eat they vomit. If they get to that point and I feed them, they wolf it down which makes them vomit again. Damned if I do and damned if I don’t.
They’ve been to the vet. They’re healthy and parasite free. Some cats apparently are more prone to vomiting than others. Lucky me got two of them.
We have had this problem, too. What brand of food are you feeding them? Our cats tend to puke when they are fed what I would consider “middle-of-the-road” brand foods, such as Purina. If we feed them a more expensive food such as Iams or Science Diet, they don’t puke. We also have a scarfer in our bunch (he tends to wait until we get home to eat, and then gorge), who likes to swallow his food whole and then vomit the whole works. We recently bought a Science Diet formula that’s aimed at dental care, and it is in larger chunks meaning he can’t swallow it whole. Yes, these foods cost more but in the long run I think we spend about the same because our pets don’t seem to eat as much of it. I think it must be more filling for them. Plus, they’re not puking it up and going back to eat more.
My cats eat that stuff - the prescription diet for teeth. They still puke like it’s going out of style, the little barf machines. I figure it’s 1-2$ per puke.
Five cats, one puker here. She’s always puked a lot. One thing that helped is buying smaller bags of food. We were thinking that the large bag might have been getting a little funky by the time we got to the bottom of the bag, since that’s when we noticed the puking more.
Anyhoo, she’s 16 and still going strong. Just a big fan of puking. Not much you can do but chase them around with a bottle of cat puke stain remover and a rag.
I used to feed them Solid Gold which is a higher end food. But it’s kinda expensive and makes their poo smell HORRID, like to the point of nausea. So I switched over to Purina. Not the best, I know, but it’s cheaper and their poo smells are minimal now. I haven’t noticed any increase in vomiting near the end of the bag but I’ll keep an eye out and see if there’s a correlation.
And Omegaman, have you had them checked out for internal parasites? Those can cause stinky, runny poo as well as vomiting.
We tried all the fancy schmancy stuff, and settled back to Meow Mix without the hairball control or delicate stomach formula (that made it worse).
I had a rare delight with a giant puke on one of my kitchen chairs. It was in almost whole pieces and it dried completely before I found it. I just picked it up in one chunk and tossed it!
The payback for these little victories is stepping in a warm, fresh pile o’ puke at 2am in my bare feet.
I have a bunch of a cats and a couple were pukers. They were middle of the night or stealth pukers so I never knew who was doing it so I switched them all to Hill’s Science Diet Sensitive Stomach Feline*. It has really cut down on the puking. I still have one that eats too fast and pukes occasionally and the occasional hairball but nothing like I had before.
If they need food at a certain time but you want to limit the amount they eat you could look into a timed feeder to dispense small amounts of food several times a day.
*I buy mine through the vet clinic I work at so I do get it much cheaper. You could look into the Purina ONE or Select sensitive stomach formulas. I think Iams may have one, too.
Far as I can tell the one has never puked. His “sibling” however, despite being as short-haired as you can get, is a hairball producing machine. Also circumstantially fish-flavored foods and perhaps just general ennui - good thing I mostly have hardwood floors He’s also the expensive-to-repair-urinary-crystal-producing machine and the one who actually physically destroys expensive things ( anything with vulnerable thin cords, like headphones or window blinds ).
If he wasn’t so sweet and play up to my ego ( he’s really only especially sweet to me, otherwise being politely standoffish with everyone else, unlike his sibling who’s an attention whore who loves everybody ), he’d be violin strings by now.
I guess I belong here as one of my cats has earned the nickname “vomitkitty”. His problem is that he eats random and unusual things then pukes them up. So far we’re up to random string, dental floss, paper grass from a basket, a rubber snake, plastic bags, plastic wrap, plastic anything, and of course the infamous pennythathadtobesurgically removed. I find catproofing the house helps, despite being impossible as he can open cabinets.
Not much you can do but chase them around with a bottle of cat puke stain remover and a rag.
