Concerned with frequent vomit/regurgitation

[ZsadistRaven]

Hello,
I know there are a lot of post out there with similar/same issues, but I'm a big worrier. Especially when it comes to my fur babies. I have two orange tabby cats that are nearly two years old, one female (Nami) and one male (Luffy). For about the past week or so I've been finding an orangey-yellow mess nearly once everyday. Some of the messes are clearly regurgitated food since I can see the unchewed food, but the past few, while staying the same color, have been lacking unchewed food. (One, I believe was a mix of a hairball and some sort of plastic one of them had eaten. Most likely Luffy since he chews on anything he can get his mouth around.) This has started to concern me since hairballs are not common to my cats and I don't know who has been making the messes nor when they've been happening. Because of Luffy's past history of gulping down food, I assumed all the regurgitated messes were his doing. Especially since Nami is more of a nibbler when she eats. I had mentioned the occasional regurgitated messes to the vet on their last visit (about 7-8 months ago) and she seemed a little concerned. Those were not very often and didn't happen more than 2-3 days in a row. After changing how I fed them so they were forced to slow down while eating, everything seemed fine. So far, their weight has stayed the same (give or take a few ounces) and neither seems to have lost their appetite. I believe both are as healthy as they have always been, but the increased frequency of the messes has gotten me more than a little concerned.

Basically, what I would like advice on, is when should I consider taking them to the vet? Thanks

 

[daftcat75]

A daily mess for a week is concern enough to take them to the vet now. Unfortunately, if you don't know who's doing it, that's double the vet bills. At a minimum, they should both have their blood screened. Maybe you will get lucky and see markers of inflammation, dehydration, or imbalance that can help point which cat has been spitting up. But you can also rule out many illnesses with a blood screen so it's still worthwhile. I would get a couple of wifi cameras to figure out who is spitting up because I doubt you want to pay for them both to have X-rays (rule out foreign body ingestion) and ultrasounds (rule in or rule out inflammation or growths in the gut or other organs.) Yellow mess means it has bile in it. That means whoever is doing the spits is reaching pretty low. It's likely not a simple regurgitation if there is bile in it. As gross as this sounds, you may even want to baggie up a mess and take that down to the vet. The vet should be able to tell you if that's food or bile or some combination of the two.

 

[ZsadistRaven]

Thanks for your input. The messes are more orange than yellow. It's pretty much the color of their food ground up. One of them did have a moment, over a year ago, when he did vomit bile, but that was a whole other issue. I wouldn't put it past my male cat to have eaten something he shouldn't have. As I stated before, if it fits in his mouth he tries to eat it.