Monday, May 10, 2010

Seasonal Change of Coat Promotes Healthy Vomiting in Your Cat

Cats, as do all furry animals, change their coats in spring and autumn. The old coat moults out as the new, more appropriate coat grows.

However, as cats are fastidiously clean animals, spending many hours each day grooming, they ingest a lot of fur normally, but much more at these seasonal changes.

This results in more vomiting than usual. Vomiting up the ingested fur, often as a hair ball, but also as loose fur, is a natural and normal way for the cat to expel this.

Frequently, people panic about their cat vomiting (as someone delightfully put it to me recently, she is a worrying cat slave:)) and rush their cat off to the vet, often to be given a toxic medicine.

When all the cat was doing was expelling something she didn't want.

By learning to differentiate between when vomit is a normal, healthy cleansing process necessary for a healthy cat, and when it is a cause for concern, you can save yourself a lot of money and anguish, and your cat unnecessary medication, not to mention the stress of the vet's visit.

Other natural and normal vomit for a cat is when they eat grass and then bring that back up, accompanied by saliva. When they bring up shards of raw bone when fed a natural diet is also normal. A cat who is suffering from food poisoning will have vomiting and diarrhoea for about 12 hours. If it eases after this, your cat is coping well. If it continues, appropriate homoeopathic treatment can quickly resolve the problem.

Learn to inspect the vomit before deciding what to do.