How often is your cat sick and/or brings up hairballs?

[Workyworky]

We've got an indoor BSH tabby. 10yrs old. She has always thrown up lots. She goes through phases and right now she's being sick every other day. It's mostly just bile stuff but if she's eaten her food too fast or has been hoovering (she's worse than a lab!) she'll bring that up.

This is in addition to the regular, occassional hairballs you'd expect.

She seems OK in herself. She'll mope about a little bit after being sick sometimes but goes back to normal pretty fast.

We've tried different foods and it's made no difference. No pattern to it. She is sick wherever.

The vet never really answers it when we mention it.

We need new flooring and I really, really want carpets but my sensible head is telling me they'd get ruined without weeks with the sick. I'm so fed up of having to look over the floor before you go into a room so you don't tread in anything.

My long-haired Siberian brings ups hairballs once every couple of months or so. For such a floofy cat I thought it might be more frequent but I have been pleasantly surprised. Touch wood.

SO your BSH brings up hairballs and is also sick after inhaling her food quickly? Those are two separate issues. The hairball is natural and I wouldn't worry too much about it. But if she is sick after eating, maybe physically try slowing her down? With one of this trick saucers with compartments? You know the ones a cat or dog has to actually work at to getting the food out?

My long haired Persian has started to bring them up now. She never has before.

I also have a cat that regurgitates (as opposed to vomiting up undigested food), she's been to the vet a million times, nothing fundamentally wrong with her, just a tendency to do it. Things that help:
Avoiding stress (definitely no loud friendly unknown people especially men in the house - tricky if you want building plumbing etc done)
Worming her regularly with a paste wormer that also deals with giardia (this isn't always the issue, but at some times of the year it definitely is)
Flea treating her regularly so she doesn't groom too much (see also above re. stress)
Frequent small meals half & half wet & dry food, & sticking to the specific foods that seem to agree with her
We have bare floorboards, so not so bad providing she doesn't decide to vomit on: dd's bed, dp's piano, dp's computer, dp's favourite sofa (despite her objection to men in general she LOVES dp a lot & likes to sit on things that smell of him). Good thing she's very cute.....

I just mentioned the hairballs because people would have asked about them. Not bothered about those: apart from when she leaves one on my new velvet curtains like she did this morning. 😪

Not overly concerned about bringing food back up either. We've found techniques to slow her down when she's eating, like a very wide shallow bowl. She is just so greedy and would eat constantly if we let her and is constantly scrounging and starts begging for an hours before meal times.

I'm off to Google worming paste though. We tried to give her a worming tablet recently which proved impossible! Frustratingly, we think she had some of it so need to wait the full time frame before we can give her anything else.

I have 4 BSHs, the eldest is almost 5. I think I've found about two hairballs in their lives. I mainly raw feed them and apparently that (and raw eggs in their food) stops it building up.

This is the one that I was given by my vet. There's also spot-on flea/worm combined drops which you can use but I think the reason we were given the above is that it is maybe broader spectrum

Got a guzzler here too who often pukes it straight back up after. He's 11 years and has been doing it for years. It also goes in phases. We've had a few months off but last week it started happening again. Vet says all ok.

I feed him a mix of dry and wet food and put half a Cobalaplex on his food each day to help absorption and vit B levels. Other than that I don't do much else.

The dog loves it coz she scoffs everything the cat throws up. 🤢

I too have a BSH who vomits more than I'd consider reasonable. Usually bile or a little food within. She's 11 ears old.

Interestingly, when I moved out for 18 months, she was hardly sick at all at the new house. We've moved back (I'd had relationship problems) and the vomiting has increased again, so I'm wondering if it's connected to any plants in the garden. She chews grass and any plant leaves that are grass-like, so maybe something is disagreeing with her.

We occassionally let her (supervised) into the garden and she makes a beeline for the grass. Half an hour later she'll throw up several times.

She's been on meds for the last few years (hasn't made any difference to her vomiting) so we need to be careful about else we give her.

She is behind the sofa as we speak making that I'm going to be sick yowling noise. 😒

That's normal, she eats the grass to help her boak it up. Mine are indoors only and treat my poor Monstera as the salad bar.

I think it could be worth getting her thyroid checked. Sometimes an over active thyroid can cause vomiting and 10 is about the age the thyroid sometimes starts acting up.