FishProfiles.com Message Forums

Fair warning, we're talking about kitty puke... anyone who has a sensitive stomach, you've been warned!

So, I get to worry about the kitty again... I finally managed to get Lucky over the snarfing-dry-food-as-fast-as-he-could-and-then-puking stage. I switched his food to California Natural (which both he and I are liking... he loves the taste, and I love his lack of puking it up!) And hey, it smells pretty dang good, too!

He gets dry food on a free-feeding basis, and gets a small portion of canned food for breakfast and dinner (mostly to put his meds in). The canned food is limited to the amount he'll readily eat without walking away (1.5 ounces or so). He seems to prefer the dry over the wet, which I'm cool with.

In any case, I thought things were going well, but now instead of puking up barely-got-to-the-stomach food, he seems to have developed a pattern of throwing up in the mornings. Not regularly, but every other week or so. When he throws up, it's nothing but a nasty yellow-orange bile. (And nasty-smelling enough to make my admittedly over-reactive gag-reflex start reflexing. Ugh.)

It usually seems to happen on the weekends, now that I think about it... when I'm getting up later and he's not getting breakfast exactly on time. Or when he gets dinner earlier the night before. It doesn't always have a pattern... he got fed fairly early in the evening on Thursday night because I had to go out, but didn't puke Friday morning... He DOES have access to dry food at all times, so it's not like he's on an empty stomach due to anything but his own preferences.

I was talking to heidi/houston earlier and we were pondering whether or not he might be having some kind of acid reflux or something, as when he throws up, it's generally been a good amount of time since he's been fed and there's nothing but bile coming up. It's not hairballs, not food, just bile.

This morning as I was lazing the morning away with a book, he was loving and cuddling on me, then lay down near my feet. And then I heard it. This repetitive *hurk* noise, and when I looked down at him, there he was, hunched all helplessly, body convulsing with the contractions of his stomach (every 2-3 seconds, I'd guess)... and then the poor thing got grabbed by the scruff of the neck and deposited into the tub where he hurked up the contents of his stomach. He just looked completely miserable and helpless. (Sorry 'bout that puss, no puking on the bed!)

I don't know that it says anything that he was doing the same whole-body gagging/contracting stomach thing for nearly a minute before getting deposited in the tub. Seems like an awful long time. Enough time for me to figure out what was going on, throw my book to the side, grab him and stumble around the end of the bed to the bathroom, anyway.

He's got a vet appt next week tuesday for his 3 month bloodwork (hyperthyroid) so I'll be asking the vet questions then, just curious as to what y'all think could be going on. I know a bunch of you are kitty-parents, too.

Any ideas?

~Meow. Thus spoke the cat.~

Does he throw up any hair with it? Even if he does I would not put him on a hairball formula(most of them have all sorts of stuff that will set his stomach off again) but look for something extra to add to his diet to help pass the hair or calm his stomach.

Otherwise aside from a few dozen potential medical disorders that I cannot check for myself(see what the bloodtests say) it mostly sounds like a simple case of a cat starving himself because his schedule is messed up. Silly things get so set to a certain schedule that if they aren't fed at the same time they often won't eat. Sometimes they won't eat at all even when presented with their usual canned food if it's an hour late. If he already has a sensitive stomach the lack of food and possibly excess drinking of water to make up for it may be just enough to upset him. Normally canned food is preferred and if possible an all canned diet is better for health but if you can only feed him the canned at various times I would either eliminate the canned food or restrict it to one time a day that you know you can keep to test if lack of food is the problem. He may refuse to eat during the usual time for a few days though because he's used to getting his meal of canned so it may take some patience to see whether it works. He may also just need more time to finish adjusting to the food.

Nope, no hair is evident in the vomit. It seems to be completely composed of bile.

I don't think it would be a reaction to switching the food, as he is already well into the second bag of dry, and who knows how many cans we've gone through. He didn't have any reaction to switching foods and this problem didn't start until well after we switched. In fact, when I switched him (gradually, of course), I thought we had kicked the puking habit. About 3 weeks after he was completely on the new food, this new habit formed.

If I didn't think his crunching on the food would wake me up, I'd add another bowl of food in the bedroom, as he prefers to eat when someone is in the room with him. He's got a bowl in the kitchen and one in the living room for that reasoning.

He IS very picky about his food as I've mentioned in earlier threads. Dry food that sits out for 24 hours is rejected. He gets about 1/8 of a cup dry food in each bowl per day, plus 1/4 of a large (15 oz i think?) can divided into two meals. He'll eat most of that, leaving a tiny bit of dry food behind, including the pieces he crunched and rejected. (He's odd like that... he'll take one piece, crunch it up, and decided a fragment of it isn't to his liking, so he'll spit it out...)

Now that I think about it, he may be protesting the fact that I took away his lunch. The roommate is home during the day and would feed the cat a canned-food meal (he was super skinny when I got him and needed to put on some weight). Now that he's up to what seems to be a good weight - we'll find out what he's at when he goes to the vet - I gradually cut out lunch. I intend to get my own apartment or room with a friend who actually... you know... has a job and doesn't drain me financially and emotionally, so no one would be home to feed him lunch in the future.

Bah... I don't know... going to see the vet, hopefully get some answers!

~Meow. Thus spoke the cat.~