Voming in cats: types, treatment and prevention

Cat vomiting is a frequent problem that many pet owners deal with on occasion. Seeing your cat throw up can be concerning, but knowing what might be causing it and the different types of vomiting can help you take the appropriate action. Knowing when to seek help and how to handle the situation is crucial, regardless of whether the problem is as simple as your cat eating too quickly or something more serious.

There are many different reasons why cats throw up, from innocuous hairballs to more serious medical issues. While the cause may always be obvious, there are situations when it may indicate a more serious problem that requires care. Knowing the different types and patterns of vomiting can help you give your pet the best care possible.

The most typical forms of vomiting in cats, available treatments, and ways to avoid vomiting in the future will all be covered in this article. It is possible to maintain your cat’s health and lessen the stress that comes with frequent vomiting by being aware of what to do.

Type of Vomiting	Treatment and Prevention
Hairball Vomiting	Brush your cat regularly, provide hairball treats or special food, and ensure hydration.
Eating Too Quickly	Use a slow feeder or divide meals into smaller portions throughout the day.
Food Allergies	Switch to hypoallergenic food and consult a vet for proper diagnosis and diet plan.
Ingesting Foreign Objects	Keep small objects out of reach and monitor your cat"s behavior. Contact a vet if vomiting persists.

Cats can vomit for a variety of reasons, from relatively minor ones like eating too quickly to more serious ones like infections or kidney disease. It is helpful to identify the types of vomiting and how they are treated, whether they are rare, frequent, or accompanied by other symptoms. While easy home remedies may be helpful, a veterinarian visit is necessary to rule out more serious conditions if vomiting persists. Smaller meals, maintaining a nutritious diet, and monitoring any changes in your cat’s behavior or health are all part of prevention.

Voming, its causes and danger

The cat’s body uses vomiting as a sophisticated reflex-based defense mechanism to get rid of potentially harmful substances. Typically, the primary indicator of gastrointestinal issues is vomiting.

We note right away that an attack of vomiting that occurs once every 3-4 days is the norm, especially in cats. However, there are still specific reasons. To understand them, you need to analyze the cat"s diet, and perhaps even make it starve for a while. Most often, cats vomit from overeating – they simply eat too much and too quickly. This applies to both dry food and natural food, but it is dry pieces that are very easy to regurgitate, especially if they are poorly chewed. Most often, those animals that regurgitate live in conditions of competition for food and therefore consume food quickly and greedily. By the way, some of them will not disdain to eat the food excreted from the body again.

Animals living in groups frequently regurgitate because they typically eat quickly and chew their food poorly.

A domestic cat is either overeating or eating poor-quality food if it frequently regurgitates food, hardly taking its mouth off its bowl. Economy class food, like Felix, Whiskas, Sheba, and similar products, is obviously not going to be beneficial for the pet because it has a poor composition and a lot of harmful additives.

Purchasing premium and super-premium food for your pet is advised. Specialized lines of this food should be purchased if your pet has a chronic illness.

Causes of vomiting in cats

Poisoning and reflex irritation of the digestive tract are the two main categories of causes of vomiting.

In the first instance, the digestive tract is irritated by foreign objects or an overabundance of food, which triggers a reflex reaction. This may occur for the reasons listed below:

• Inal meals: too abundant, not suitable for cats, poor consistency (sticky, rubber food, with bones, etc.D.);
• Swallowing a large amount of wool when licking (especially in long -haired cats): lumps of wool cause mechanical irritation of the stomach, and also prevent the normal elimination of feces from the body, which also contributes to vomiting;
• parasites mechanically irritating the liver and intestines;
• chronic diseases of the gastrointestinal tract;
• swallowing foreign bodies – small toys, rubber bands, threads, waste from a garbage bucket;
• Sea disease-vomiting due to violations in the work of the vestibular apparatus.

In the second instance, poisoning happens when harmful substances enter the bloodstream, circulate throughout the body, agitate the brain’s vomiting center, and induce vomiting. The following can be the cause of intoxication:

• waste products of intestinal parasites – kittens are especially sensitive to their effects;
• poor-quality, expired food;
• chemicals: detergents, bleach, medications, houseplants;
• infectious and inflammatory diseases leading to gastrointestinal tract disorders;
• chronic kidney diseases causing general intoxication of the body;
• false pregnancy, which can occur in cats after estrus;
• brain damage: trauma, edema, increased intracranial pressure;
• stress, shock or psychological trauma.

Danger of vomiting

Dehydration is a risky side effect of vomiting that happens quickly when vomiting is severe and prolonged. Particularly poorly tolerated are small kittens. If the animal continues to vomit, you need to take it to the vet right away because dehydration can kill an animal quickly.

When a cat is vomiting frequently, not even water can stay in its system; as soon as the cat drinks, it begins to vomit once more.

It’s also important to take the cat’s temperature; it rises in infectious and inflammatory diseases and falls in poisoning and shock. You should visit the doctor or give him a call at home in both situations.

The temperature of cats is measured in the anus for 2-3 minutes, the norm is a temperature of 38 to 39 degrees

Vomiting shouldn’t smell bad, have a strange color, or contain blood or mucus; if it does, you should call a veterinarian right away.

Symptoms of vomiting

A lot of pet owners mistakenly believe that their pet’s vomiting is the result of a severe cough. However, the vomiting is a symptom of the cough, not the other way around. Typically, a vomiting attack occurs in phases:

1. The cat is sick, she shows anxiety, moves from place to place, licks itself, makes swallowing movements, she salivates abundantly.
2. The animal begins to cough, stretches its head forward, breathes deeply and frequently.
3. Contractions occur in the abdomen and throat, gagging, often at first fruitless, and then with contents.

When the cat initially feels queasy, frets, and licks its lips, a watchful owner can already tell that the pet will soon throw up.

Types of vomiting in cats

Let’s start by discussing physiological vomiting, which poses no threat to the pet’s health. This might be:

Vomition from eating grass – with its help, cats cleanse the body. If a cat ate green grass and vomited greenery, then this is normal and even useful. However, sometimes cats quite successfully digest all the grass, and if they eat it, this does not mean that vomiting will soon begin.

Cats love green grass because it helps them stay healthy and resupply their body with vitamins.

Any breed of cat can use these products, but long-haired cats, who frequently vomit hair, can benefit most.

The majority of the time, harmless vomiting is transparent and contains easily identifiable materials like wool, grass, threads, and food fragments.

Vomiting after eating undigested food, dry food

This is a typical type of vomiting for domestic cats. A fast pace of food absorption, large volumes and poor chewing lead to the stomach not having time to stretch and throwing the contents back. The cat can vomit right next to the bowl or a few minutes or even half an hour after eating. Then the animal can return to the bowl and ask for food again. There is only one way out – limit the portions of food. Dry food must be chewed so that you can hear how its pieces crunch. If the animal swallows them whole, then the likelihood of vomiting increases greatly. In addition, when washed down with water, the food actively swells in the stomach, so initially the cat needs to eat much less.

The most frequent reason cats vomit is due to their voracious appetite and quick digestion of food.

The author of the article has a beloved old cat of the Thai breed, which is already 17 years old. In the last 3-4 years, she has been vomiting quite often, and this problem is well known to us. About 1-2 times a week, she regurgitates dry food, which she previously swallows without chewing. She has special food, premium class, designed for good digestion, the pieces are not very hard, they are easy to chew. But the cat has very bad teeth, so periodically, when she is too lazy or has no time to grind the pieces, she swallows them quietly, quickly and without any crunching. This process is also influenced by the presence of a second animal in our house, a young and healthy cat, who eats completely different food from his bowl nearby (for young neutered males), but looks towards the cat with the aim of moving her away from the feeder and eating everything that lies there. Usually we monitor this process and do not allow the cat to encroach on someone else"s food, but sometimes we are distracted and see the final scene: a cat who goes from his bowl and the cat"s food that goes after it. Therefore, the cat periodically eats greedily, quickly, without chewing, after which, after 10-15 minutes, a maximum of half an hour, it begins to slurp and lick its lips, then runs to the floor, coughs there and throws out all the contents of breakfast or dinner on the carpet (a favorite place). It looks like slightly overcooked (rarely) or not chewed at all (more often) food. The cat feels guilty and immediately hides. Sometimes it does not have time to run to the floor and vomits right on the bed where it sleeps. You have to clean up piles of food after it and wash the beds. It is not scary, but unpleasant. This happens about once a week. If you feed the cat wet food of the same line, then there is no vomiting, because it is soft and well chopped. Usually after an attack of vomiting, I feed it a little less than usual. But we must give the cat its due, it never regurgitation does not return to the bowl and does not ask for more food. She sets herself a diet for 3-4 hours, and only then she asks hard to eat. Sometimes after vomiting, he goes to a bowl of water and drinks a lot. The funny thing is that when the cat was young, he tried to eat the food that she regurgitated. Now he has become smarter and does not do this anymore. The cat also sometimes vomits hair, but this happens very rarely, about once every 2-3 months, during periods of active shedding. A young cat also vomits, but very rarely and never food. He has two problems – vomiting grass when he overeats it, and vomiting foam with hair during active shedding. But since the cat licks himself much less than a female cat, he vomits hair literally a couple of times a year and a little. And the pet vomits grass in the warm season, when we walk with him on a harness, and he absorbs grass in the quantities his body needs. We can conclude that at a young age, cats have much fewer problems accompanied by vomiting than in old age. And it is better to transfer old cats to wet food, this will serve as a preventive measure from vomiting.

Vomiting yellow liquid (bile)

Bile vomiting indicates that the animal has either not eaten in over 24 hours or that the stomach’s contents have been entirely released into the surrounding environment. The duodenum, liver, and small intestine all expel bile. This is typically an indication of starvation and ill health in the cat, which is frequently accompanied by apathy and appetite loss. It is preferable to show the animal to the veterinarian in this situation.

You must take the animal to the vet right away for an examination if it is vomiting in addition to being lethargic and lacking in appetite.

Dark yellow bile could indicate parasites or a foreign body within the body-related hepatic vomiting.

When a pet vomits frequently and persistently with bile, it may be a sign of chronic liver, intestine, or gallbladder diseases. Large-piece swallowing, overeating, and the consumption of fatty or stale food can all be triggered by associations.

Vomiting white foam

White foam, which forms from juice secretion in an empty stomach, is a sign of hungry vomiting. White foam is the result of a unique protein that the stomach produces in order to shield the mucous membrane from an aggressive environment.

This can occur as a result of chronic hunger, parasite infestation, gastritis, chemical toxicity, etc. White foam vomiting that happens once or twice while the animal is still eating is not thought to be harmful; however, if the animal exhibits persistent urges to vomit while its appetite is low or nonexistent and its condition is concerning, a visit with a physician is necessary.

Vomiting in a kitten

Cats that vomit are extremely dangerous, and even with expert medical care, there are fewer chances to save the younger kitten. Kittens’ health suffers greatly from dehydration, which can swiftly result in death. Early-life vomiting typically signifies either low-quality breast milk from the mother or congenital digestive system abnormalities. Treating cubs can be challenging because medications can have an erratic effect on a developing organism.

Kittens that are three months old or older are treated similarly to adult animals and are handled accordingly.

Other types of vomiting

Bloody vomit is the most dangerous kind and always needs to be treated by a doctor. It typically signifies the presence of a viral infection or a worsening peptic ulcer. Additionally, small blood vessels in the digestive tract may burst as a result of prolonged, persistent vomiting. The owner of the animal must act quickly to save the pet; if the blood is undigested, it may be brown, indicating liver dysfunction or other serious illnesses. The animal must be taken to a veterinary clinic right away.

Green vomiting is indicative of pancreatitis, a blockage of the digestive tract that is frequently seen in viral and infectious diseases.

Video: vomiting in cats – advice from a veterinarian

Cats frequently throw up, but it’s crucial to know what could be the cause. While some vomiting fits are harmless, others may indicate a more serious problem. You can tell if your cat needs to see a veterinarian by monitoring the type and frequency of vomiting.

There are efficient treatments available, ranging from dietary changes to medications, if your cat is vomiting frequently. For advice on the best course of action based on your cat’s particular condition, always consult your veterinarian. Early intervention can avert more serious health issues in the future.

Feeding your cat the proper food and ensuring that they are eating at a comfortable pace can frequently prevent vomiting. Keeping an eye out for any strange behavior and scheduling routine examinations will help you keep your feline happy and healthy.

Video on the topic

Webinar on the topic: “Acute vomiting in cats and dogs”. Lecturer – Olga Kalashnikova.

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Webinar on acute and chronic vomiting "Maropitant and vomiting: let"s figure it out", lecturer Yulia Degtyareva

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Voming in pets | Causes of vomiting in pets | Types and help with vomiting | Veterinarian"s Advice