Giant hairballs

[Mypuppywontsleep]

My 10yo short haired indoor cat will be going to the vets when I can get her in an appt.

she’s been sick a lot lately. She is otherwise absolutely fine from what I can gather, just tends to vomits a fair bit. it’s usually just her food with some hair in it. She likes to lick and groom herself a lot

TMI warning - This evening she has thrown up a truly HUGE lump of matted hair. It looked like something you would pull out of a clogged drain. It was the size of a small rodent. In fact I thought it was an undigested fully in tact small animal until I had a closer look.

I googled and it talks about intestinal obstructions - she seems to be ok and it’s out, so not an emergency, but I am worried about how matted this was - must have been in there a long time? And uncomfortable?

does she need some kind of medication to try stop her licking so much?

One of mine regularly produced huge hairballs.

How old is your cat? They could be in pain and over grooming from trying to soothe their pain.

She is 10
She just licks so much, I’ve taken her before they don’t seem to do much to help

How long has she groomed a lot?

Could be arthritis, try YuMove supplements were amazing for my old girl.

years! It’s not new
I will take her to vet

You can get a beef paste type thing for hairballs - my cats get it during hairball season.

We use Katalax but there's loads of different ones out there.

It sounds like it could be behavioural.

I would give her hairball paste and brush her daily.

Them having hairballs isn't a problem usually.

You can also get special anti-hairball food. Mine are indoor anyway, and indoor cat food tends to be better for hairballs anyway, but I generally do one bowl of the anti-hairball dry for every 3-4 of the indoor dry.

0I would also notice that there would be a bit of a build up of vomiting (especially Boycat, who was an expert chucker upper!) followed by a hairball then the throwing up would stop for a while. I would guess yours was throwing up a lot to try to get rid of the hairball.

She can’t seem to tolerate dry food very well she vomits! She’s lost some weight I think, from the vomiting. Reflection I think she has been trying to get this up a while now as was sick frequently the past couple of weeks - more than usual but she was ok in herself otherwise acting normally. Hopefully she would take paste though - going to get some!

At one time we thought she was itchy, she is a bit of an intense over groomer. I mean she’s super clean as hell but even brushing doesn’t make a difference to the licking

I watched a tiktok of a cat recently that had to be x-rayed as they suspected a blockage or tumour they saw a shadow in the scan. Opened him up and there was an absolutely ginormous hair ball stuck in his stomach which was causing a blockage. It filled the pan.

I would recommend taking yours to the vet just in case, my cat had a stomach blockage this year (flip flop cat if you saw that thread) and he was throwing up his food occasionally before he got to the point of us realising something was wrong which was when we found out his stomach was inflamed 3 x it's size.

Over-grooming can be a sign of stress and pain - if she's been sick on and off for weeks and has just chucked up a massive hairball, it may be a good idea to get her checked over for any underlying issues.

Mine brought one up once that looked like a long thin rodent too. No problems since, though.

My cat is super-floofy and has been matting recently. She hates brushing and turns her nose up at the beef paste. We give her IAMS anti-, hairball dry food about three times a week. She vomits up hair sausages. Because of the matting we took her to the vet today and was told she's gonna have to suck up being groomed because she's no longer able to cope doing it all by herself. So we're starting with a mitten brush then will move onto something more heavy-duty. She's gonna hate us for weeks, but she doesn't have a choice anymore.

They are treating her for fleas although they could not find any fleas (wet paper test) what they did find was an allergy kind of skin irritation (they said from fleas, of which none were found) - which I have already told them she has some kind of skin itch but I don’t know why she has it or how to treat it so she likely IS itchy and is licking to stop the itch. So I just got expensive flea treatment. I have to go back in 3 months if her skin is no better. If so Then I will ask for something to help her skin other than flea treatments. She’s got scabs dotted around from scratching which she has done to herself lots of times in the past. She has major dandruff and fur falling out bless her. She is predominantly white so we check her for fleas and dirt all the time and don’t find any we also treat her for fleas but this time I have a more expensive type of brand than the one I have used before.

Sounds more likely to be harvest mite allergy or just some random allergy.

Have you tried top quality grain free food?