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A Tale of Two Kitties
Zul the Conqueror
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...
As our story unfolds, there are two cats:
They are both pound kitties, and about 3 years old. Artemis is a little overweight, although she's lost some since the two cats were put on a diet. They are fed by an automatic feeder, twice a day, 1/2 cup of Science Diet Indoor Cat food each time. In the evenings they are treated to a quarter can of Science Diet Indoor Cat Wet food each.
Our two catagonists are both in good health, and keep each other reasonably exercised. Sariyah is the athlete of the two, and is definitely dominant. She usually lets Artemis eat first when the machine does its thing, and they're fed from separate bowls for the wet food. There have never been any conflicts over food.
Artemis has a bad habit of eating so much or so quickly that she throws up, despite being fed three times daily, so that she shouldn't be overly hungry before being fed. This happens anywhere from once to three or four times a month.
Is there anything I can try to stop the puking beyond the usual "see a vet"? I'm considering it, but since they're in good health generally, and it's not overly frequent, I don't feel like it's urgent.
Edit: Additional background:
Artemis did have a respiratory infection when she came home from the shelter; I had to feed her from a syringe for about a week. She also has a (bad?) habit of eating any hair, mine or theirs, or lint she can get her paws on. I live in an apartment, and they go out on the balcony sometimes, but they're essentially indoor cats.
As our story unfolds, there are two cats:
Artemis
and Sariyah.
and Sariyah.
They are both pound kitties, and about 3 years old. Artemis is a little overweight, although she's lost some since the two cats were put on a diet. They are fed by an automatic feeder, twice a day, 1/2 cup of Science Diet Indoor Cat food each time. In the evenings they are treated to a quarter can of Science Diet Indoor Cat Wet food each.
Our two catagonists are both in good health, and keep each other reasonably exercised. Sariyah is the athlete of the two, and is definitely dominant. She usually lets Artemis eat first when the machine does its thing, and they're fed from separate bowls for the wet food. There have never been any conflicts over food.
Artemis has a bad habit of eating so much or so quickly that she throws up, despite being fed three times daily, so that she shouldn't be overly hungry before being fed. This happens anywhere from once to three or four times a month.
Is there anything I can try to stop the puking beyond the usual "see a vet"? I'm considering it, but since they're in good health generally, and it's not overly frequent, I don't feel like it's urgent.
Edit: Additional background:
Artemis did have a respiratory infection when she came home from the shelter; I had to feed her from a syringe for about a week. She also has a (bad?) habit of eating any hair, mine or theirs, or lint she can get her paws on. I live in an apartment, and they go out on the balcony sometimes, but they're essentially indoor cats.
Zul the Conqueror on
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Our cat has a sensitive stomach. On the Hills food he would throw up regularly. Even the Sensitive Stomach stuff. He would throw up tubes of crunched up food, back up a bit, throw up liquid, and then spit. (Remember, this is my experience, I'm not a vet!)
We switched him to a better type of food -- Felidae. (If you're in the US, there are even better types of food. But this is the best we can get here. There is a list floating about in these forums, it's great.) He likes the taste better, and throws up less.
If *if* your cat has a sensitive stomach, you might find that switching to a better quality food will help. We thought that Oscar was gorging on food at first, too
Good luck! Let us know how it goes.
When I first got my most recent cat, he started to get a bit tubby because I was feeding him slightly more than he needed, but he would eat it all up because he was used to there not being any food there. After a weekend of giving him dribs and drabs of food to let him know that there would always be food there, he switched to only eating as much as he needs and is now at a healthier weight.
If I ever leave him unfed though (unexpectedly being away from the house through a normal food time), he'll go back to the scoffing-down behaviour and end up throwing up on something (and always on carpet or clothes even though most of the house is boards.... screw you cat).
Oh - and he's an ex pound-cat too... which probably makes the 'eat whatever you can get your hands on' behaviour more prevalent.
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We had friends who's cats did the same thing, only it was partly because they were quite old and had lost all their teeth, and thus could not chew that well.
This doesn't sound like it needs an expensive vet visit at all. The way we solved this problem was to buy kinds of food that he must chew and slow down his intake. Basically, the bigger the food pellets, the more he has to chew (I am assuming he doesn't throw up the wet food). Dental Diet works well for this reason, as the food is designed to force them to chew it (and thus clean their teeth). It's higher in fat though, so you might have to adjust how much he is given.
Edit: just saw your post about how the vomit is liquidy. That might be due to stomach sensitivity. My mom's cats have something similar where they need a special brand of food (all natural or something, I'll have to ask them) and NO table scraps, because the human food messes with their stomachs too (though my mom can't help herself sometimes). Call up your vet and ask for advice on high quality foods that go easy on the tummy?
Find a nutritious brand of food the taste of which your cats don't like much.
???
Profit.
(I think the idea is that you have a little ocean of food around the island of tennis ball in the bowl, and the animal is forced to slow down in order to pick at the halo of food, as opposed to digging into the heaping middle of the bowl, OM NOM NOM.)
Dude, this totally works. Our little guy would do the same thing, and gorge until he very promptly was the opposite of hungry. My wife got some larger river rocks (out of a planter we had) and dishwashed them. Then put 3 in the bowl. What I usualyl do is put food in and then put the rocks in. It slowed his roll quickly, as he has to eat around them. Now it is probably once a month that we have to clean up after him.
A+ Advice, would recommend again.
Seconding this advice...we had to do the same with our English Bulldog because he's such a piglet and would just scarf down everything at once, then hoark it back up 30 min later. It really did help. We also upgraded him to a wider bowl so that the food lays in a single layer on the bottom of the bowl instead of having the "heaping mound of NOM" to dive into.
I'm going to try putting them on Sensitive Stomach food once the current bag is done and see if that helps. Thanks for all the advice!
It is also the only science diet food that's never on sale at the store.
You also might be over feeding them. My cat is healthy and eats 1/2 cup/day.