# Vomit, Constipation?



## seg4527 (Feb 14, 2009)

Hello all,

I am wondering if this is or is not an urgent situation. 

I wrote a long summary here, but basically my main questions are the following: 1) Can introduction of a new food rapidly to the diet cause painful constipation in as little as two days? 2) Can licking the bottom area and pained vocalizations be a sign of constipation trouble, or does it always mean urinary problems? and 3) With the conditions mentioned below, should I give her time (a couple of hours/a day?) to let her body sort out these problems, or is it an emergency that requires a visit to the vet right away?

I have a 2.5 year old cat, munchie. She almost always eats Friskies Tuna & Oceanfish in a can. I realize this isn't the greatest thing to be feeding her, but money is quite tight right now, and she absolutely adores this food, so it seemed like a good temporary compromise until I'm working again. She's been eating about a can a day from October through the present.

We were running low on that food, and while I was at the grocery store they were all out of the Friskies. So I picked up a couple of cans of canned Iams Salmon, which she used to occasionally eat over the summer, just until I could pick up a few more cases of her favorites. So, for the past two days she has been eating this food instead of the normal. I know that you should usually gradually change a cats food, but in my haste I figured since she used to eat it occasionally without problems, it would be okay.

So then we come to this morning, when I woke up. I opened a new can for her first thing, like I always do, and she gobbled down about 1/3 of the 3 oz. can (rather normal for her 1st round of morning feeding...she usually goes back to the can once or twice more in 30 minutes before I put it in the fridge). Shortly after eating it, she threw up, which she will do occasionally, so I wasn't concerned, i usually just give her a tad extra food later in the day to make up for the vomited up stuff (the vomiting usually happens 1-2 a month, which from what I've read, isn't really unnormal).

After she threw up is when things got bad. She made several trips to the litter box, with nothing coming out, and was meowing as if in pain or very stressed. I thought it was a urine problem, and was prepared to call the vet, but she urinated normally yesterday and there was in fact a normal amount of urine in the litter box, and based on its semi-clumpiness, seemed to be between 30-60 minutes old. She continued trying to go the the bathroom, I can only assume trying to have a bowel movement since there was already urine in their. She would fail, sit down, lick her anal area, and try again.

Then she started making more pained vocalizations, and acted a little defensive when I approached her to comfort her (she has never done this before, always very affectionate). Shortly after, she threw up a little more (only liquidy stuff, but the color of her food). She then started begging for food, and I put out a little bit from her last remaining can of Friskies, which she smelled and got extremely happy and then shortly afterwards threw up yet again.

There were a few more attempts to use the litter box which failed. 

All of this happened over the period of 2-3 hours, and most of the vomiting, failed litter box attempts, and meowing was confined to one hour.

Since then, she has calmed down significantly and is simply lying on her chair taking her normal late morning/early afternoon nap. I'm keeping a very close eye on her, and am prepared to call the vet the second anything goes wrong again or if people here advise me to anyway. Although she never did have a bowel movement this morning (she usually doesn't do that in the morning anyway) she has calmed down a lot and is sleeping, and is letting me pet her just like normal and there have been no more scary noises coming from her, which is the only reason I am giving this some time. If it starts up again, I'll call the vet, but in the meantime I'd really like to know if what happened this morning is cause for a vet visit even if she appears fine now. I'll also keep a special eye on her litterbox regardless, to make sure she does poop at some point today.


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## Vanessa (Feb 26, 2009)

I was told that mineral oil is a good treatment for constipation. 

I had almost the same problem with my cat who was straining to the litterbox every 5-10 minutes and produced nothing or closed to nothing, a few times with mucus and blood and didn't poop for a few days and mewed in the litterbox and wasn't eating and wasn't active etc. First I thought it was urinary problems, then I figured out it was constipation. I was going to rush him to a vet but I called the breeder (friend) and she stopped me. I tried to give him pumpkin puree or metamucil dissolved in water and failed. Within a day the problem resolved itself and my cat came back to his normal self although he pooped a few days later. In my case it was side effects of antibiotics I gave him. 

I remember somebody on one forum was talking about stool softener for constipation but honestly I don't remember the details. 

Hopefully others will help.


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## seg4527 (Feb 14, 2009)

Thanks for the advice, I read online somewhere that human stool softener or a light laxative like mirolax can work, but I'm suspicious of giving human medicine to cats. If a little of that will help though and is safe, I can have my wife pick some up for her on her way home from work. 

I also read about vegetable oil helping too...I have some wonderful olive oil I buy from a cheap local middle eastern place, is a little bit of that recommended? I imagine that that would be safer than medicine, but I'll wait for confirmation that it might actually be beneficial before trying that either.


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## doodlebug (May 13, 2006)

You could be dealing with dealing with simple constipation or you could have something as serious as a blockage going on. If you were only seeing the straining, I would say give her some hairball remedy, pumpkin or Slippery Elm, but the vomiting concerns me and is more indicative of a blockage. The fact that you're feeding wet food also makes constipation less likely. I don't believe the food change has anything to do with this since you went from one wet to another.

You could give the hairball remedy, pumpkin or Slippery Elm (see link below). Do not give Mineral Oil (see second link below) and Olive Oil really won't be as effective as the other things I mentioned. And monitor her. If she stops eating, becomes lethargic, appears to be in distress then you will need to get to a vet immediately, maybe even an emergency vet. The thing you would be risking is that a blockage could be causing additional damage as time goes on (for example, string or thread could be tangling and cutting off intestinal tissue).

So, if it were me, I'd try the laxatives, but if she was still vomiting and hadn't produced anything by tomorrow morning, we'd be going to the vet. 

http://www.littlebigcat.com/index.php?a ... lipperyelm

http://marvistavet.com/html/body_consti ... colon.html


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## seg4527 (Feb 14, 2009)

Thanks for the advice, doodlebug. She has some pumpkin coming her way later tonight.

A note on the vomiting: She had a little more to eat and she has not vomitted it up. This was probably about 2 hours ago. She was really chowing down, so I cut her off after a couple of minutes so she wouldn't throw up from eating to fast. There haven't been any problems at all since, but she still hasn't tried to use the litter box since this morning. 

I'll also mention this over the vomits: Her first vomit came after eating the new food. Her second vomit, which came shortly after the first one, didn't have much substance to it, mainly liquidy, but there was some hair in it, a little more than usual. And the third vomit came after she was begging for food, I gave her the last can of Friskies, which she ate super fast. 

I'm going to keep the address and numbers of the nearby emergency vet handy in case we need to go there in the middle of the ni
Are there any specific things to know whether she has a blockage? Can I try touching her abdomen and seeing if causes her discomfort, or anything like that? 

edit: well, she woke up from naptime on schedule, and is acting aa little more like herself. she snuggled with me for a while and then sat in her beloved bathroom window. she at a little more, so now i'll keep my fingers crossed.

edit #2: No vomit after after another feeding. that's twice in 5 hours that she's been okay with the food after not being able to hold anything down this morning. she's also been superplayful, doing her flips in the air trying to get the evil mouse, something that she doesn't even do half the time when she's been fine. Still no poops, but she usually poops around 7 or 8 PM. which was why it was so odd she was trying so hard and in so much pain at 10 AM. I'm fairly sure that she went fine yesterday normally. My wife usually scoops the litterbox, but lets me know if there's no poop there, and she didn't mention anything. Is it even remotely possible that she had an upset stomach and really bad gas from the new food that just made her think she had to poop?


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## Vanessa (Feb 26, 2009)

I keep my fingers crossed but I think/hope she is fine. I forgot to mention than Julian also threw up when it happened to him. Actually I don't know how long he felt bad, he strained to litterbox when I came from work in the evening, and in the morning he was already fine. But he pooped maybe 2 days later or something like that. 

I think if there is blockage or a cat is constipated his belly should feel like stone, at least what I have heard. 

I talked to the vet another day and she said that it's o'kay for kitties to poop once in 2-3 days or sometimes with even longer intervals, and that doesn't mean something is wrong with them.

Also, I read on another forum that a lady whos cat had constipation from time to time gives her regular milk - lactoze is suppose to cause stool I guess. I tried it with Julian but I susect that he tolerates lactoze just fine.


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## seg4527 (Feb 14, 2009)

Some good news: we had a little baby poop this evening around her usual time. It was much less than usual, but she didn't sound like she was in pain at all, and she hasn't thrown up after finishing off the can of Friskies that she originally up from. I put out little spoonfuls for her throughout the day to make sure she didn't eat too much too fast. And she had about 1 tsp of pumpkin, which she didn't seem to care for much, but ate out of interest, so I might have to figure something else out for the future.

Does the little bowel movement and no vomiting mean for sure that it's just constipation and not a blockage, or is there still a chance of that? 

I'm really glad I found this place...this is my first pet, and I've had her for almost a year now and have learned quite a bit about cats, but still get really nervous when I don't know what's going on. Thanks for the help, and I'll provide updates.


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## doodlebug (May 13, 2006)

Awesome news! Amazing how we get caught up in our cats pooping habits isn't it?

Sounds like she's doing fine. Just keep monitoring her. She may take the hairball remedy better than the pumpkin. You can mix pumpkin in her wet food, did you try that? You can also try Benefiber, it's tasteless and odorless and mixes well in wet food.


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## seg4527 (Feb 14, 2009)

The thing that got to me the most was her painful vocalizations. It was extremely low pitched, and similar to the noise she makes when she wants to play and I'm busy doing something else, but with much more intensity, and when I tried to pet her she batted me away with her hand. It was so bad I almost wanted to cry - it's the first time I've ever heard her in any kind of pain whatsoever.

I let her lick the pumpkin off my finger, since that's the way she'll occasionally eat peanut butter, so I figured she'd know what to do. She had a little less than a teaspoon of pumpkin, so I put the rest on her paw and let her lick it off. I didn't want to mix it up with her food, since the problems originally started (either coincidentally or not) when I gave her different food, and didn't want her to be confused by the smell of the food, think it was another new one, and not want to eat it. I have some hairball remedy sitting around, so if she doesn't go for the pumpkin today now that it's less interesting, I'll give that to her.


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## Vanessa (Feb 26, 2009)

If you ever suspect that the cat is in pain just look into her eyes. If the whole eyes are black, then she is in pain. But be sure to look into the eyes with differenting lighting in order to avoid the mistake.


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## seg4527 (Feb 14, 2009)

We finally got a good poop. A little straining at first, but no apparent pain, and then she went. Thanks for the advice and words of wisdom - I was really scared for her and definitely would have freaked out if it wasn't for the help of you two. I'll keep on giving her a little pumpkin for the next couple of days until I'm sure we'll all better - and I'll stay consistent with the friskies until I can afford the good stuff for her (and for me  ).


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