# Diet for cat who vomits fequently



## funsize (Mar 29, 2010)

Back story:
I have 2 cats that have both been free fed friskies or meow mix their whole 6 years of life. One of the cats vomits A LOT. Some weeks more than others, but it's not uncommon for her to vomit right after she eats if the food bowl had been empty overnight. Several times a week, and it stains the carpet, too. The vomit looks undigested and it always comes out in a neat clump with some mucous. 

We think she panics if the food bowl had been empty and once she see's food again she just stuffs herself silly. This has been going on since as long as I've known her, which is about 4 years...and probably longer. She's a small cat, not overweight.
Well I had enough of my orange stained vomit carpets and did some research. My cats will have nothing to do with wet food, I've tried many times. I assume they are addicted to the carbs and coating on the kibble. 

So, I thought I would start by introducing them to a healthier dry food, higher in protein and lower in carbs to try to wean them off the junk. Then eventually attempt 50% dry , 50% wet, etc.

Unfortunately dry has to be apart of their diet because I work on call and I can be gone for over 24 hours at any given moment. Sometimes I work 48 hour shifts away from home.

So, I am just trying to come up with a diet that will work for me and my cats. I am now switching them off the indoor friskys formula and onto natural balance ultra premium dry food.

Any advice on what to do would be great. I am hoping the dry food with less grain/food coloring, etc might make her digest the food better?

Thanks in advance.


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## KatBudz (Jun 18, 2009)

Ahh frisky's is so bad, it's junk food, I'm glad your switching them over. She may have a food allergy, so even try the Natural Balance allergy formula which I believe comes in either Chicken and green pea or Duck and green pea. Those are also grain free, while the Natural Balance premium does have grains. When she vomits the food, is it still whole? Because if she is eating too fast and not chewing the food, it won't be able to digest. It can be a slow process of weaning them off the junk, one of my friends fed her cat whiskas, and then i educated her on cat food so she switched to wellness core, and her cat barely ate for 3 days and refused the food. Slowly she was able to intro it and now he eats the core. 
As for the canned food, since you can be away for 2 days at a time, I would suggest feeding them only canned food when your home, so they do get their water intake, and only leave the dry kibble when you leave. 
If you don't mind my asking, how come you waited 4 years before thinking of switching her food if she has been vomiting since you've had her? 
Some cats can be finicky with canned food, but one that I'v never seen a cat reject is the Venison and Green Pea canned food from Natural Balance, it has a unique taste and smell that entices pretty much every cat. My cats love it and gobble it up in seconds. the Duck and Green Pea canned from NB is also really good too. Other really good canned foods are the Evo, both the regular one and the 95% meat ones, Wellness Core, Performatrin Ultra (its a pet valu brand), Eagle pack, Innova... there are more but I'm not going to continue the list. 
Also, I'm sure you already know but I'll say it anyway, make the switch from Friskies to NB slowly, since it is a higher quality food it could upset their stomachs.


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## funsize (Mar 29, 2010)

First, off, thanks so much for the reply!

I know this might sound really weird, but I had no education on cat food.. so I actually spent a long time switching her from store brand to store brand to see if that helped! And the varieties within a brand, like different flavors. I thought maybe they tasted bad or some had more dye in it than others. Of course, over a long period of time.. not over night. Eventually I figured out nothing made a difference. But I never tried high quality foods, ever.

I wonder how I could know if she has a grain allergy or not? I will definitely try her on the grain free. So far they are eating the little bits of the new food fine.


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## KatBudz (Jun 18, 2009)

It doesn't sound weird at all, a lot of people aren't educated in good quality cat food, and just think what is advertised on tv is the best. As a general rule, if there is commercials about it on tv (i.e- whiskas, iams, purina), they are not good and spend more money on advertising than they do on the product itself. And the only way to get a good food is if you actually go to a specialty pet food store, not grocery stores or petsmart. Don't get me wrong, petsmart is good for everything else, just not food. And it's not necessarily a grain allergy, cats just can not digest grains, companies use it more as a filler and it does not hold any nutritional value for the cat. As with the dye, commercial brands put that in to make the kibble look like its nice and healthy to the pet owner and its no good at all. The high quality holistic foods obviosuly do not use dye, and the bags of kibble can vary in colour which is normal. The best is to obviously read the ingredients, and some of the things to look for that arent good ingredients is : anything with corn like corn gluten or ground corn, by-products, anything with soy, ethoxyquin (preservative), animal/meat products (since they don't specify what kind of animal it is), artificial colouring... there are a few more but I can't think of them off the top of my head. Also, what bowls are you using for your cats? Plastic is no good, because it harbours bacteria, the best bowls to use are either the stainless steel or ceramic.


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## Dave_ph (Jul 7, 2009)

She's wolfing down her food. i bet you see it come up undigested. Spread it out on a plate rather than putting it in a bowl so she has to swallow smaller mouthfulls.

Been there, done that and it works.


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## Owned_By_Two (Mar 30, 2010)

> Well I had enough of my orange stained vomit carpets and did some research.


You should invest in a Dirt Devil Spot Scrubber:
http://www.amazon.com/Dirt-Devil-SE...1?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1269979311&sr=8-1

or a similar product. Don't worry about the reviews, they were written by people who don't know how to use the product. I've used mine for years and it's never met a cat spot/stain that couldn't be removed. For tough stains, I'll preheat the water/cleaning solution in the microwave for a few minutes.

For really tough stains, I'll use Nautavac Stainex, which I get at my local grocery store. You can find it where they rent the carpet cleaners. Stains disappear from the carpet before your very eyes with this product. The DD works so well though, I've gotten away from using the Nautavac Stainex.


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## D&L (Nov 22, 2009)

another great item for cleaning carpets is the little green machine, the water is already heated.

As for the vomiting, been there am doing that. when i know it have been six hours or more between feedings with Daisy she only gets a little food at a time. My kids are canned kids but it would work with kibble kids too. Instead f giving you vomiting cat all her food at once giver a 1/4 wait ten or fifteen minutes then another 1/4 and so on, that will work great if they are on a schedule. If you free feed them you could do the same thing only when you go to give her food the third time give her the days worth. But I do agree with the plate idea.
Another thing that was suggested to me was an auto feeder, one that has a timer system.


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## nanook (Jun 12, 2005)

It does sound like she's woofing her food too fast. Another thing that works is to put a golf ball (or similar) in the food bowl. That slows them down since they have to work to eat around the ball.


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