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June 7, 2010 3:48 AM   Subscribe

My cat keeps returning his breakfast/lunch/dinner/fourthmeal to sender on a quite regular basis. He's now 8--based on the birthdate on the intake form filled out by the person who gave him to the shelter--and we've had him for over 6 years. Is it normal for him to do this?

I've read this question, and it almost seems to fit my cat, but with the significant difference that if we go a month without our cat horking up, we begin to wonder if something's wrong.

Like that other question, there's rarely--but occasionally--a hairball in the mix. He's a short haired Russian Blue tabby (has the face and a little bit of the color), and I use a Furminator on him (he loves it) at least twice a week, removing astounding amounts of hair each time. He eats dry cat food (Blue Buffalo Co.'s Spa Select adult formula with "hairball control") and hasn't seemed to like wet food since the first time he tried it.

He does eat like there will never be any more food, but it seems to vary; some days he eats slower than others, but that doesn't seem to change the frequency of the "piles of joy." I tried cutting back so that I only fed him a few times a day, and if I do that he howls like he's starving and still it comes back up. If I leave out full bowls of food, he'll eat directly from the center until he sees the white bottom and then stop, but then barf a couple minutes later. The funny, as funny as this gets, part is that he'll devour, toss his cookies, then go back and eat more, but less this time.

His vet tried anti-hairball meds, which he absolutely detested. Beyond that, the vet has been stumped. Does the hivemind have any ideas?
posted by fireoyster to Pets & Animals (22 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
I've had two cats who did this. One did it for no apparent reason, and lived to be 19 (!), with no apparent ill effects other than the annoyance to us. One is currently 6 and she does it, I think, because of a little neurosis about food supply (we picked her up after some jerk abandoned her in our apartment parking lot) -- so for us letting her free-feed helps, but it sounds like that's not the problem for your guy.

So, no clever ideas here, but just saying it's not that unusual.
posted by dorque at 4:07 AM on June 7, 2010


Beyond that, the vet has been stumped.

Try a different vet.

My cat did this exact thing, and the cause turned out to be a tumor pressing on his esophagus, which was preventing food from getting to his stomach. He ate like there was no tomorrow because he was starving.

I'm not saying that's what's wrong with your cat, but what I am saying is that there is a medical reason for this and you need to find a vet who is willing to figure out what that is.

As a first step, I'd ask for an ultrasound.
posted by anastasiav at 4:41 AM on June 7, 2010 [1 favorite]


Our cats had a problem with this, although it was on a pretty infrequent basis. Maybe once a week? We switched to a higher quality dry food and this has cut the random piles of regurgitated cat food down considerably. The only time they're throwing anything up now seems to be when they have hairballs. That might be the first thing you should try... We feed our cats the Kirkland cat food from Costco, but there are a ton of other brands out there that are 100x better than the supermarket brands like Purina, Meow Mix, and Friskies.
posted by ganzhimself at 4:56 AM on June 7, 2010


You know we probably won't, and can't know, but you know who will... the vet. I'd suggest that if your vet doesn't know, either find another one, or take your cat in to see a specialist.
posted by TheBones at 5:06 AM on June 7, 2010


We had a cat who did this & it turned out to be kitty IBS. She wound up needing steroid shots pretty regularly to help control the vomiting as she'd often puke 4-10 times per week. (But of course the steroids caused kidney issues later down the line ... yay.)

Another cat did the food scarfing thing & it helped to put a ping pong ball in the food dish to slow her down.

Cats are weird.
posted by oh really at 5:18 AM on June 7, 2010


Our cats - aged 9 and 10 do this all the time - all three of them. For us the solution has been to feed them a half ration at a time, wait a bit and then feed the remainder. I think it's because they get less food than they used to to help combat middle aged kitty rotundness and they think it's horribly unjust and scarf their food down WAY too fast. And we feed a high quality hairball relief food as well.
posted by leslies at 5:25 AM on June 7, 2010


I agree with anastasiav. I had a similar situation. Get another opinion, with ultrasound.
posted by jgirl at 5:47 AM on June 7, 2010


Response by poster: We just recently moved, and I considered a new vet who's closer, even though I really like our current one. I'm thinking I'll take kitty in for a second opinion.

A couple other things I forgot to mention: Kitty is apparently getting plenty to eat. At his last checkup, he was a couple pounds overweight. In addition, his food comes back up almost completely whole, like it barely saw teeth on its way down.

I went with Blue Buffalo Company food after I read on at least a couple different forums that it's pretty good (insofar as dry cat food is considered "good" in the pet forum world), and is supposedly light years better than the colored packing peanuts known as "Meow Mix." I even tried larger-sized kibble, but, for the first time ever, he refused that food and would only eat it if nothing else was forthcoming and after much wailing.
posted by fireoyster at 6:02 AM on June 7, 2010


Our kitties threw up because their teeth were bad, so they had rotten-tooth-juice running down their throats. ewwww poor kitties.
posted by L'Estrange Fruit at 6:05 AM on June 7, 2010


One of my cats does this in the spring time -- he gets excited about the birds, scarfs his breakfast like there will never be food again, and then races from window to window to see ALL THE BIRDS AT ONCE until he barfs up everything he just ate. And then eats again, but less. (And of course spring is also shedding season so he's dying to barf hairballs too.)

My solution is that in the springtime I put out HALF his breakfast, wait for him to crazy it up for an hour or so, and then put out the other half. This cuts the barfing by about 75%. Sometimes he STILL eats too fast and races around until he barfs, but with only half the food at once it doesn't happen nearly as much.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:11 AM on June 7, 2010 [1 favorite]


We had a cat that did this. Our vet recommended trying out putting her dry food on a plate rather than in a bowl, as if she was throwing up from scarfing her food this could slow down her eating. It worked! We fed her on a plate and the problem disappeared.
posted by not that girl at 6:14 AM on June 7, 2010


My cat started doing this when he was 8 or 9. He was puking pretty much everyday. He was allowed to free feed on dry food (I tried many things, he seemed a little less pukey on Iams sensitive stomach, but it didn't cure the problem). Took him to the vet and after some expensive tests that didn't reveal any major problems, she told me to put him on an exclusively wet food diet.

Luckily for me, he loved wet food, and it pretty much solved the problem immediately. However, he can only eat the pate kind- shreds or chunks also make him puke. On the plus side, the wet diet also solved his weight issues over time, much as this comment outlines. Strangely, he was fattest (19lb for a medium size cat) at the height of his puking.
posted by kimdog at 6:22 AM on June 7, 2010


My cat did the same thing, also because of a tumour that restricted her food intake. The vets didn't see it for ages (she was like that for years), and when she started acting funny it was far too late to do anything but put her to sleep.

It could be lots of other things, of course, but you should get a second opinion.
posted by jeather at 6:26 AM on June 7, 2010


We have one cat that is supposedly in excellent health, who did this for a long time. We tried lots of different cat foods, and she puked 'em all. Then we tried one more -- same brand as some of the earlier food, but a different flavor -- and the puking stopped. If we ever let her eat anything else, it comes back. All I can think is that she has a problem with a very common food ingredient that this one flavor of cat food doesn't have. She never pukes now except when she has a hairball or is clearly stressed out (our other cat is a bit of a bully to her), but it's pretty rare.
posted by litlnemo at 6:32 AM on June 7, 2010


My husband posted this question. We put a golf ball in the dish and have never had the puking problem since. A rock or something similar would also work if you don't have golf balls.
posted by sadtomato at 6:34 AM on June 7, 2010


Our cat Myrrh had done this exact same thing since she was a kitten. Like your cat, it wasn't always hairball-related. For 12 years, once or twice every day, she'd hork on the rug. Every. Day. I brought her to several vets, she had multiple lab tests over the years, but no one ever found anything wrong with her. Apparently she just liked to barf. And like yours, it often contained undigested food. She was on high quality kibble the whole time, free-feeding (there was a bowl of food out from which our 3 cats would eat whenever they wanted). Then about 1.5 years ago we switched the cats to a premium canned food (Wellness brand), fed two meals/day. They love the food, Myrrh's barfing problem has all but disappeared (aside from the odd hairball), and she now keeps her food down. Perhaps the dry kibble is irritating to your cat's system & it'd be worth trying canned food.
posted by cuddles.mcsnuggy at 7:12 AM on June 7, 2010


My pukey kitty hasn't puked since we got one of these guys. Having to reach in and paw her food out slows her eating enough that she doesn't eat too much at one sitting.

We've got her on the Blue Buffalo indoor cat formula (other foods increased her puking), and it's just come out with a new shape, little balls, that works MUCH better in the feeder than the regular triangle/trefoil-ish shaped ones. The older one tended to get caught up in the funnel in the feeder, and she's either too old to realize she can reach in and paw at it and dislodge more food, or she's got us well trained to come by and give the feeder a shake every so often.
posted by telophase at 8:06 AM on June 7, 2010


I have one of those food bowls that hampers their eating so he slows down; I also found that pouring some water in with the kibble helps, whether it's because the added moisture makes the food easier to keep down, or if drinking the water slows him down. I also got larger, shaped kibble that he has to chew. (yes, I read the post re: canned but I live in a van and don't have a place to store half-eaten cans, or I would give him canned.)
posted by The otter lady at 8:36 AM on June 7, 2010


Note that some cats (particularly fastidious groomers) will sometimes vomit *because* they have been vigorously brushed - because they lick and swallow all the residual hair that was loosened but not brushed away. Ironic, but I definitely see this.

The initial thing I would look for (based on my cats over the years) is changes in blood chemistry that indicate kidney or thyroid or other systemic problems - but I would think this is the first thing your vet would have checked. (Also, if your cat is gaining weight, kidney disease seems unlikely.)

An outside shot, but some tumor(s) could cause vomiting, and an ultrasound (though not cheap, alas) would reveal that, as jeather said. (We have a cat with liver tumors diagnosed that way.)

Is he an only cat? One of my cats vomited more frequently when she lived with other cats, presumably from anxiety or stress that the others would eat all the food.
posted by aught at 9:00 AM on June 7, 2010


A few months ago, my cat started throwing up his barely-digested food regularly. After running every test in the book (x-rays to check for obstructions, blood tests, etc.), the vet determined that he had most likely just developed a food allergy. We switched him to a limited-ingredient cat food (We use California Natural, but many others are available), and he hasn't barfed since. You may want to talk to your vet about doing a food trial to determine if this is your cat's problem.
posted by rebel_rebel at 11:31 AM on June 7, 2010


My cat did this. At first they thought it was thyroid, and only later when we were getting ready to take him to iodine treatment did we find out it was a tumor. More disconcerting was that when he first started throwing up we were convinced it was hairball (as he produced what I still contend was the world's largest hairball on one of my favorite shirts).

I would say please get your cat checked out and make sure that the vet takes it seriously. I don't think that my vet didn't take it seriously, but my Cat Mom senses told me it was something bad and I should have gone to the super-vet-specialist right away, even if it was a series of tests that confirmed the original neighborhood vet's diagnosis (it didn't help that they also moved very slowly).

I am not trying to scare you. And Mr. M. if he were reading this would tell me that there was nothing I could have done and I am not a terrible cat mother for not doing what I typed above. But heaven forbid there is a next time, it is what i will do.
posted by micawber at 1:10 PM on June 7, 2010


My husband posted this question. We put a golf ball in the dish and have never had the puking problem since. A rock or something similar would also work if you don't have golf balls.

Same here. My vet calls it "scarf and barf:" they eat super fast, don't seem to chew, and then regurgitate almost immediately. Golf ball in the bowl forces them to slow down. I would try that first, and then if your cat is still throwing up, go back to the vet to investigate other causes.
posted by DiscourseMarker at 1:39 PM on June 7, 2010


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