"Bulemic" Kitty

I have two cats, both neutered males. I had them for a couple of years before my husband and I had to relocate to another city and we had to leave our sons behind. Luckily, my parents, who previously lived next door, offered to keep our boys and for the last six months, they have lived with them.

The transition has went very well. The house is larger so there is more room to play, and my father is retired so he is completely devoted to playing with the cats. Most importantly, they've only moved next door. Ours were the only two houses in the area, so the lawn that they play in is the same one they have grown accustomed to for two years.

Unfortunately, one of the cats has a behavior problem that was apparent when he lived with us, but is surfacing again. He's "bulemic."

The older cat, Pee-Wee, who I admit is the alpha male, will rush the food bowl, shovel up mouthfulls of food and swallow without chewing. He'll do this four or five times, until his belly is full, and then IMMEDIATELY run around the house like a maniac until he vomits. He does this at any time of the day, not just when it is feeding time. There is always a full bowl of food around - sometimes P.W. just picks at it, sometimes he eats normally. But more often than not, he's binging and purging.

He's the friendliest cat you'll ever meet, and he's even a little chubby! What could be causing this, and how can we make it stop?

my Jim cat used to do that ......

we ended up cutting him back and feeding him small bits at a time and that made a huge difference.... no more gorging was allowed.... he would get about 1/4 cup at a time..... and we fed him more often.... it made a huge difference... no more puking....

the other thing that we did was put stones in his bowl..... large stones that he would have to push around to get to the food .... it forced him to take his time to move the stones around to eat.....
good luck
S

Originally Posted by Shalva

the other thing that we did was put stones in his bowl..... large stones that he would have to push around to get to the food .... it forced him to take his time to move the stones around to eat.....
good luck
S

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This is what we did for our cat Sampson when we first adopted him, he did this. The vet could find nothing wrong so they said to try the large stones and it worked. Every few months I find I have to put the stones back in the bowl just to slow him down again.

I would also see about having him checked out by your vet to rule out other health issue to occur with this problem. Good Luck!

My cat used to throw up like that... but he wasn't running around the house like mad. I started giving him hairball remedy and it helps tremendously. He almost never throws up any more. This is something you would probably want to talk about with your vet though.

That happens with alpha cats sometimes. In the wild, the alpha will eat first, usually gorge until he is full, and if he eats too much will throw up.

The advice offered is good, but you might want to consider keeping totally separate feeding places for the 2 cats so that they aren't competing, or at least the alpha doesn't feel like he is competing.

My alpha did that for a while. We added more food bowls in the house and once the competition died down, he quit that behavior.

Tiger does this too. It never crossed my mind that he was being the alpha male. I have noticed that he does NOT like it when the female cat comes in my bedroom. My bedroom is his turf, and if she comes in, he gets mad if I pet her and goes and pouts. He will tolerate her for a while, but then he wrestles with her and she leaves. They wrestle all the time so I know he's not tring to hurt her. We have two food bowls for them, but I wonder if he still considers this as a competition? Maybe if I try putting his food and water in my bedroom?? He vomits a lot of times after he eats. I can see whole food that wasn't chewed in it. If trying to put his food in my room doesn't work, how big should the stones be?

This is common behavior in cats off the streets and Alpha males. You can do a couple of things to stop this.

Elevate his food dish
Keep the water in the same room, just not really close to the food
Take away his bowl and put his kibble on a cookie sheet
Stop overfeeding him- people tend to feed the "bowl" not the cat
Sit with him while he eat, on the floor next to him
Buy a treat ball and put his food in that. he has to work to get to the food, and it stops him from gulping
Feed him at scheduled times every day. Don't deviate from the schedule. Once he knows he can depend on food appearing at the same time(s) he will calm down.