Cat Illness Problems - Vomiting Cat

Most cats have a problem with hairballs, and usually they'll simply vomit them up. Grooming as meticulously as they do, they're bound to ingest a certain amount of fur each time, and it's likely they will bring up the resultant collection. This is a particular problem in long haired cats of course, and frequent brushing and combing will help to keep down the amount of fur being ingested each time your cat grooms. There are also proprietary treatments for helping hairballs pass through the digestive tract rather than having your cat throw up to get rid of them, and your veterinary surgery can suggest what they think might be useful.

If you see your cat vomiting just after a meal it might simply be that he has gobbled it down far too fast, and if he tends to bolt his food you can try giving him more frequent meals but serve less each time so that there's less food in the stomach to be expelled. He's also likely to vomit right after a meal if he rushes off to play straight away and doesn't give himself a chance to digest what he's eaten.

Naturally you'll never feed him anything that is likely to harm him, but another cause of vomiting is getting a bone fragment stuck in the throat, particularly if he's found an interesting chicken bone thrown away somewhere. Chicken bones are notorious for being brittle and it's too easy for a cat to choke on one of these fragments. - in his efforts to expel it he'll make himself sick.

It's important to be able to know when vomiting is simply because he's bolted his food or if there is something actually wrong which needs immediate treatment. There are many other reasons for a cat vomiting, and these can be due to a number of illnesses or conditions related either to the digestive tract or to other parts of the body. Monitoring your cat daily, you will be able to pick up any signs and symptoms of impending illness and can take him for expert advice so as to diagnose and treat as soon as possible. If vomiting occurs more than on the odd isolated incident, this may be a sign that he needs checking out to identify anything making him ill.

Always make sure that your cat doesn't swallow elastic bands or lengths of string - if these are ingested they can cause problems in the intestine, which will lead to a closure of the digestive tract and resulting in vomiting. In these cases it's highly likely that he'd need an operation to remove what he's swallowed.