Why would a healthy cat throw up partially digested food?
The food is Nutro Complete, weight management formula. Could it be too rich? Cats only get 1/3 cup each in am and pm, so overeating is not a problem. They have been on this food for about 6 months, and the throwing up started about 2 months ago.
I’m stumped. Should I try changing their food?
Well, I had a cat that vomited quite frequently for many years, and none of our vets could ever really figure it out. One thing you might try is reducing the amount of food. One third of a cup twice a day seems like a lot to me for a normal-sized cat, but maybe yours are larger than average?
Wild guess. This “weight management” food may have less fat than the regular stuff, and may not be oily enough to help with the hairballs. This may be hard to answer, but is it the same cat doing all the barfing?
It could just be hairballs…IANAVet, so I recommend seeing one about it.
If it is just hairballs, there are some things you can give your cat to help reduce the hork. The brand name I had was Cat-a-Lax, and it was basically cod liver oil. All you did was squeeze about an inch onto your finger and the cat would dive in. Rexx just nummed it up, and the undigested food horking stopped.
Both cats do hairballs occasionally, but this is just food. Disgusting, soft, mushy food of the perfect texture to squeeze between your toes on the way to the bathroom at dawn. bleah
A trip to the vet is in order - my 10-yr old Siamese throws up, with wheezing, and it’s time to take her back for another shot. I can’t recall the specific malady, but it’s likely she’ll be going to the vet once a month for the remainder of her life.
My cats sometimes throw up out of sheer orneriness.
Cat meows endlessly that she wants her canned food.
I do not get out of bed at 4:00 a.m. to feed it to her.
Cat goes into kitchen and eats some dry food.
Cat saunters into bedroom and throws up dry food right next to my bed and meows, “there.”
Is it both your cats throwing up? If so, just try changing the food. I do have one cat who is very small and when I give her too much food she gobbles it all and promptly throws it up.
If they are throwing up consistently, the could be in danger of dehydration, which can cause all sorts of problems.
In any case, I would take them to the vet–soon, if it doesn’t clear up with different food.
Our cat throws up sometimes because he has a habit of eating too much, too fast, and gives himself a tummyache. He was adopted from a shelter that had all the cats together, so there was a lot of competition for food, and he sometimes forgets that he’s the only kitty around and nobody else is going to eat his food.
I have a fat cat that does that occasionally. i figured out that it was probably a hairball (she would not throw up hair right away, but after a couple of pukes, there the hairball would be). So I started her on that hairball treatment (the kind that looks like a brown paste and tastes like salmon) once a week, and it really has cut down on the puking. Sometimes i feed her canned food as a treat, and she scarfs that down and pukes—those times I think it’s eating too fast because she’s a greedy little pig.
I keep dry food out for my cats all day. (They cry if it isn’t there.) If their bowl is empty for more than an hour, my older, fat, boy cat thinks he’s starving and eats as much as possible. Within 10 minutes he pukes out of sheer gluttony. Most often, the food hasn’t been chewed. My babies have never had hairballs. They sometimes also yakk in the summer, when I let them outside and they eat grass.