If you give your cat a laxative for hairballs,...what do you give?

SPECIFICALLY, I am asking about commercial preps, not pumpkin, mineral oil, fish oil, SEB, etc.  What do you give and does your cat like it?  Looking for recs.

Feline Greenies Hairball Control Smartbites Treats 

loves them. no compliance problems

ACTIVE INGREDIENT: Each treat contains 25 mg of petrolatum.


http://www.greenies.com/cats/smartbites-hairball-control-cat-treats.aspx

http://www.thecatsite.com/t/250653/egg-lecithin-for-hairballs

I use egg yolk, egg yolk lecithin, and if I have to, Vet's Best Hairball treats (with digestive enzymes, slippery elm, marshmallow root and some psyllium as the main active ingredients).
I prefer to avoid anything with vaseline (petrolatum) or mineral oil in it when possible.

I will use pure vaseline in an emergency - when a hairball is blocking passage of food.

Ours like TEMPTATIONS Hairball formula (bright silver package of Temptations) treats, you have to give atleast 10 at a time for it to be effective...

LDG said:

http://www.thecatsite.com/t/250653/egg-lecithin-for-hairballs

I use egg yolk, egg yolk lecithin, and if I have to, Vet's Best Hairball treats (with digestive enzymes, slippery elm, marshmallow root and some psyllium as the main active ingredients).
I prefer to avoid anything with vaseline (petrolatum) or mineral oil in it when possible.

I will use pure vaseline in an emergency - when a hairball is blocking passage of food.

Click to expand...

I totally agree!  I found a good one at Pet Smart. It's by GNC Pets, & is petrolatum free.  A small tube is about $7.00 I think, & is chicken flavored. 

The ingredients are; Vegetable oil, sugar, Phyllium seed powder, Malt syrup, Glycerin, Lecithin, Cat nip, chicken flavor, silicon dioxide,   :-/ & guar gum.

Not crazy about all the ingredients, but I think it's better than petrolatum.  I will usually alternate that, or an egg yolk. About every week or two is all he seems to need.

Vaseline. Just rub some on the paw. Works a treat Once sorted try prevention methods. Good luck.

i just bought a tube of tomlyn laxatone maple flavored for samantha.  she had been vomiting periodically, sometimes hours after meals, and we had been completely unable to link it to food.  one of my friends mentioned that her cat sometimes vomited when she had a hairball she couldn't pass.  i have been having trouble getting samantha to eat it though; i'm literally shoving it in her mouth.  (she has no sense of smell so it's hard to get her interested in things).  

today was bad - she's only eaten once, about 13 hours ago, and she's thrown up all her breakfast and three other times she's just thrown up bile or foam.  i was able to get some more tomlyn in her, but was happy to read about coconut oil and the vet's best option.  if she throws up again tomorrow, i might try coconut oil.

So do you think the Tomlyn's is effective?  I have been warned off coconut oil by my vet - hard on the liver due to the high concentration of fat...happy to hear others' thoughts on this too.

I use Laxatone Natural: http://www.tomlyn.com/products/cat/hairball-remedies/natural-hairball-remedy-laxatone®

What's the vet saying? May be unrelated to hairballs.

Yes, Obi had a bout of pancreatitis - mild - last summer.  She is concerned, as coconut oil is high in saturated fat, about stressing his liver.  And he is 16.  LTS3, are you concerned about what laxatone is made of?  does your cat like it?

stephgas said:

 
i just bought a tube of tomlyn laxatone maple flavored for samantha.  she had been vomiting periodically, sometimes hours after meals, and we had been completely unable to link it to food.  one of my friends mentioned that her cat sometimes vomited when she had a hairball she couldn't pass.  i have been having trouble getting samantha to eat it though; i'm literally shoving it in her mouth.  (she has no sense of smell so it's hard to get her interested in things).  

today was bad - she's only eaten once, about 13 hours ago, and she's thrown up all her breakfast and three other times she's just thrown up bile or foam.  i was able to get some more tomlyn in her, but was happy to read about coconut oil and the vet's best option.  if she throws up again tomorrow, i might try coconut oil.

Click to expand...

Poor girl.   Please make sure she doesn't go too long w/out eating, or that will be another bad issue. You may have to really water down some food, & syringe feed her, w/ tiny bits in her cheek at a time.

I hope she eats soon, to get something back on her tummy, & she doesn't throw it up.  Even some treats at this point, if it will get her eating. 

I hope she gets better soon.  

myrnafaye said:

 
 LTS3, are you concerned about what laxatone is made of?  does your cat like it?

Click to expand...

Soybean Oil, Hydrolyzed Vegetable Oil, Cod Liver Oil, Flaxseed Oil, Chicken Flavor, Vitamin E, Lecithin, Soy Protein, Sorbitol, Beeswax, Maple Flavor, Methylcellulose, and Chamomile.

I only give Laxatone once in awhile so I'm not worried about the ingredients. Both cats like it.

Sorry to hear Obi is still having hairball problems. When Tim was having hairball problems, I gave him Laxatone almost every day. I don't think it worked, as he still coughed them up on a regular basis. But maybe they would have been worse without the Laxatone.

What helped Tim, and he hasn't had a hairball in months, is cleaning up his diet and adding a probiotic. I think both have had a beneficial effect on his digestion. We use Proviable DC probiotic, one capsule per day mixed with food. I also give him a small amount of a blend of the active ingredients in Vet's Best, as I am concerned about some of the other junk in that product. It's two parts psyllium to one part each marshmallow root and slippery elm bark powders. I mix this blend with water and stir into canned food.

If I were to give a commercial product, I would go with MiraLax, as I've had success with that helping to move along stubborn stools. When I use that, I add in an equal amount of psyllium (tiny amounts, 1/16 tsp each), mix it with water, and call it my "constipation cocktail". I suspect it would work on hairballs, too, as I notice really hairy poops from both cats after using this cocktail.

Hi, Tim's mom!  I switched to miralax briefly after Mittens seemed to have a brief GI upset.  I find that 1/4 tsp of metameucil (unflavored) in a tsp of water worked better; I had not considered using both. I recently added in 1/2 gelatin cap of the Swanson's EYL.  Obi gets Fortiflora, which did help hugely; do you think Proviable is better, and where do you get this?  I thought it came in a paste...will need to look into that.  I especially want to hear if others have a preference for proviable over fortiflora or vice versa, as my subjective observation is that fortiflora helped a lot, but perhaps proviable will be better... 

Hi there! I have no experience with Fortiflora, so I can't say if Proviable DC is better. From what I've read, Fortiflora has only one strain of bacteria plus a lot of other stuff. Proviable DC has more strains, so it may come closer to matching a cat's intestinal environment. Additionally, the other ingredients are super minimal and just enough to keep the bacteria alive. We initially purchased Proviable DC from our holistic veterinarian, and still buy from her on occasion, but I usually purchase through Amazon or Chewy.

Hi again!  I ordered some Proviable from Amazon yesterday.  I had a credit there, so I thought, what the hey, can't hurt, right?  I will report back if I feel it makes a difference!

AbbyNTim said:

Hi there! I have no experience with Fortiflora, so I can't say if Proviable DC is better. From what I've read, Fortiflora has only one strain of bacteria plus a lot of other stuff. Proviable DC has more strains, so it may come closer to matching a cat's intestinal environment. Additionally, the other ingredients are super minimal and just enough to keep the bacteria alive. We initially purchased Proviable DC from our holistic veterinarian, and still buy from her on occasion, but I usually purchase through Amazon or Chewy.

Click to expand...

They've only begun to classify what's in a cat's guts. Any probiotic marketed as being more species-specific for a cat or dog is just that - marketing.

I use human probiotics for my cats as they are typically manufactured to a higher standard of quality, the information about live CFUs tends to be more reliable, and many find "pet" probiotics to be ineffective - this would usually be due to there not being a high enough number of live Colony Forming Units. The topic of human grade probiotics for pets is being recommended more broadly at veterinary conferences.

LGD, specifically, what do you give your cats?

I give Wiskas Temptations Hairball treats, 3 treats every other day. It works great for my cats and they love them. Sometimes I give Muffin, my long haired Tortie, 3 every day as she is the one who gets hairballs the most. The treats have almost completely eliminated any hairballs.