My Cat Is Throwing Up Frequently, Help!

tolman

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For the past week, my cat has been throwing up his dry food about every other day. It has really started to iritate me that I have to clean up puke after I get home from work. The wet food never gets thrown up, it is always the dry food. It appears almost whole, as if it was barely chewed. I should also note the cat is 4 years old. Why would this be happening? Is this cause for concern?
 

jack31

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Yes, its a cause for concern. I think everyone here would suggest a vet visit.

Leslie
 

stephanietx

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First off, go to the vet to rule out any medical issues. Then, look at the food. My cat did this often until we figured out it was something in one of the foods we were feeding her. When we stopped that flavor of food, she miraculously stopped throwing up. We also found out that she can't have Nutro food. That gives her gas and causes her to throw up and stop eating.

Stephanie
 

shanynne

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Yep I would take the cat to the vet to be safe and I would definitely stop feeding it the dry food. Sounds like something in the dry food is making your cat sick. Canned food is so much better for cats anyhow than dry.

I'm sorry it's "irritating you" to have to clean up your cat's puke, as you say, when you come home from work. It may not be pleasant, but it's not the poor cat's fault and its certainly not doing it on purpose to irritate you. Please check out the following articles. You will see that by taking your cat off of dry food its health will dramatically improve.

http://www.catinfo.org/index.htm#My_...ne_on_Dry_Food


http://http://www.littlebigcat.com/?...needcannedfood


Also, it is OK to leave out the canned all day, providing it's not a sweltering 90 degrees in your house. Just mix it with a little water before you leave and that will keep it moist longer.
 
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tolman

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i would just like to update this thread. i got home from work today and he puked again except this time it was what looked to be a dark, dense hairball (i think) with yellow liquid all around it. i'm now pretty worried. is this serious?
 

mrblanche

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If it's truly a hairball, which is usually not a ball at all, but cylindrical and a couple inches long (varying with cat size), then there's probably not a problem to be too worried. If it's some other foreign object, it could be what was causing the problem. In fact, a hairball can cause the problem, too, if the cat has trouble getting it up.

Is the ball the color of your cat's hair? Is your cat long-haired?
 

liljoey511

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My cat throws up every now and then, and we have him and his sis on dry food. He is 4. I'm seriously considering wet food this go around, but just a little concerned if the whole food poisoning thing has subsided.
 

shashagirl

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I didn't know it's okay to leave wet food out all day. I usually pick it up in a half hour. The cats will eat most of it , but I have one cat that likes to nibble and tries to get more food after I pick up the plate. It would be great if he could be on an all wet diet.

Shasha will only eat dry. She use to eat wet when she was an only cat, but we ended up getting two others that hogged the wet food and she stopped eating wet. Anyways she is three years old and started throwing up last year. I took her to the vet to rule out health problems ,and the vet said she was fine. I was told to change her diet and it turned out she hasallergies to chicken. I tried so many foods and out of desperation I gave her Purina One Sensitve systems. So far so good.
 

natalie_ca

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Originally Posted by TOLMAN

i would just like to update this thread. i got home from work today and he puked again except this time it was what looked to be a dark, dense hairball (i think) with yellow liquid all around it. i'm now pretty worried. is this serious?
It sounds to me like your kitty was just trying to hack up a hairball, but I agree with the others, take him to the vet to be checked out just in case. Here is why.

My cat Abby will only eat dry food, and it has to be a particular shape (round). Her way of dealing with hairballs is to gorge herself on an entire bowl of dry food as fast as she can eat it and then a few minutes later throw up the undigested food, followed by a second throw up that may or may not contain a hairball. She is a meticulous groomer and tends to do this every 2 or 3 days.

Chynna on the other hand started to throw up at the end of February. Well, actually, she has always been one to throw up, but it drastically increased at the end of February. I took her to the vet and it turns out that she had serious high blood pressure that if left untreated would cause her to go blind, have a stroke and probably die. The vet said that a cat vomiting is often a sign and symptom of something more serious. In Chynna's case it was the high blood pressure causing her to vomit.

So now I give her a small dose of a common blood pressure medication every day, and her vomiting has declined considerably.
 

mschauer

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For what it's worth, when I first got Coco she would throw up dry food soon after eating but not wet food. What I finally realized was that she was scarfing up a bunch of dry and then drinking a lot of water. I found a reference on the web where someone said that drinking a lot of water after eating dry causes the dry to swell in their stomach. If they get full on the dry and then drink a lot of water the food swells and no longer "fits" in the stomach and up it comes.

After I started giving Coco small portions of dry spaced out over time she stopped throwing up.
 

goldenkitty45

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I'd have him at the vet's to check things out. What kind of food are you feeding? If it has dyes in it (like Meow Mix) then many cats are allergic to the dyes (red especially) and will throw it up.

The fact that he never throws up the canned sounds like he could be allergic to the dry or it has dyes or just that he's eating it too fast. If he's ok with no health problems (after a vet visit) - maybe you can just stick to giving him canned foods for meals and not have dry down.
 

orltwa

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I feel your pain as I've been going through sort of the same thing. For a while it was almost every day or every other day with my one boy Santo (1.5 years old). Finally I took him to the vet to make sure nothing was wrong. The vet checked him out, feeling for a tender belly, checking his eyes, etc etc and said everything seemed fine. He suspected it was a tough hairball that Santo wasn't able to get up so I got some Laxitone (sp?) to start giving both boys. Amazingly after I started giving them that the throwing up stopped for the most part. I'll still get a nice little pile every now and then, but it certainly isn't anywhere near what it used to be.

However this morning as I was getting ready for work I heard him out in the living room hacking. Well it was dark so I got wandering in trying to feel for the light switch on the wall and just as I found it, BAM, I stepped right in it with my bare feet. EWWWWWWWW

Just make sure that if you do get some Laxitone or whatever hairball remedy from the vet that you consistently give it to the cat. I notice that if I skip a few days, I'll usually come home to a nice present.
 

lmunsie

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My siamese can only eat wet, he very occasionally throws it up. However dry, amost everytime. he eats it too fast and it looks whole as you describe it. I've tried everything with the dry, golfballs in his food dish, elevating the dish, large kibbles, it doesn't matter.

Unfortunatly Kismet will only eat dry, so the odd time Cello gets into it, he almost inevitably barfs........ 3 times
Joy of cats?
 
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