Cat throws up alot, swallows food whole

We currently feed our cats dry food.  The dry food that we use is the Kirkland brand from Costco, the reason we went with this food is I read the ingredients and it seemed to have much better ingridients than alot of other dry cat foods at the stores.  But the problem we are having is our 4 year old cat swallows her food whole.  Shortly after having done this the food seems to have swelled up and is now too much for her, she then ends up throwing up due to this.

She threw up yesterday but I think it was due to a hairball which I could see (of course the hair was from our other cat).  But today it was just puffed up pieces of whole food.  She sometimes does this about once a week but then sometimes she can go a couple weeks without throwing up.

Should we find a different cat food that has smaller size pieces?  Or is there anything else we can do to help keep her from throwing up?

We do feed them wet cat food once a day as well.

I used to feed kibble, and had a cat that would do that. She'd eat too fast, and the food would come up.

Are you serving her a measured amount? If so, you can just give her less. Obviously her stomach doesn't want that much.

If you just want to slow her down, so the food has time to swell up and trigger that "full" feeling, there is a thread here with ideas on how to slow down those gobblers: http://www.thecatsite.com/t/240768/ideas-on-how-to-get-a-cat-to-slow-down-when-eating

LDG said:

I used to feed kibble, and had a cat that would do that. She'd eat too fast, and the food would come up.
Are you serving her a measured amount? If so, you can just give her less. Obviously her stomach doesn't want that much.
If you just want to slow her down, so the food has time to swell up and trigger that "full" feeling, there is a thread here with ideas on how to slow down those gobblers: http://www.thecatsite.com/t/240768/ideas-on-how-to-get-a-cat-to-slow-down-when-eating

Click to expand...

we always have food available to them so that they can eat whenever they are hungry.  I have never had any experience with feeding a cat measured amounts of food.  I will read the thread at that link, thank you very much.

Feeding timed meals is... interesting. :lol3: I've done both. The convenience of free-feeding is.... a blessing, on those mornings when you want to sleep in or those nights you want to stay out. :lol3: Having timed meals gives you more control, and many people find they bond with their kitty(ies) in a way that... well, can't really be described.

We moved to timed meals because we decided to eliminate kibble from the diet on the insistence of one of our vets. It was not fun at first, but worth it (to us) in the long run.

I used to use one of these food balls for Mario, but then I switched to a triangle shaped kibble and the kibble didn't go through the holes very well.