But I will write about his not vomiting, because this could be useful information for some. It’s the kind of useful information that should be passed down freely, perhaps even from generation to generation, painted on a cave wall or scratched on a scroll. You, ancient words of Ruthe Crillye, at the service of cat owners around the world. Saving carpets and rugs, one house at a time.
In case you’re new to me (hello!), let me introduce you to my cat, Mr. Bear. He’s a British Shorthair, turning thirteen this month, and is a bit of a unit size-wise. (As male British Shorthairs tend to be.) At his majestic pinnacle of weight he weighed a gangly eight and a half kilos: I feel he is considerably lighter now, but would still do well in a heavyweight cat wrestling championship.
If such a thing existed.
God, please let that exist.
For much of his life, Mr. Bear has been a vomiter. Now, before we delve into this unpleasant topic, can I emphasize that the following does not constitute or replace veterinary advice? If your cat vomits, seek professional help, etc.
I had to take my cat to the vet two or three times before I realized that my cat was not dying from some horrible disease, but simply from greed. I’m not a fan of Dr. Google’s approach to healthcare (searching the internet for your symptoms to diagnose your own ailments) and I’m not a fan of Google Vet (same thing but for your animals) for the same reasons. I don’t need to go into reasons because they should be obvious.
Although, in the end, Google Vet was actually more helpful than the really expensive Real Life Vet, I still have to be responsible and highly recommend that you see the real person if your cat is projecting bile like it’s an extra in Elf.
Anyway, back to the topic: for much of his life, Mr. Bear has been a vomiter. Great piles of fishy porridge, thrown noisily and with what seemed like an incredible full-body muscle workout, all over the carpets. Never on tiles, even if they are nearby, and never on wooden floors, which can be easily cleaned. Only on the carpet.
I swear my cat would find an area of expensive, dyeable fabric very absorbent even if he was placed in a large room made entirely of, I don’t know, granite. Or marble. If I had been a cat in the Palace of Versailles, in the time of, say, Louis XV, a real chatthen he would have stalked the miles and miles of marble-floored corridors that contained his vom until he came across a section of an antique, priceless rug woven with golden threads and then he would have held his curly wig to one side and abandoned it. .
This vomiting was fine for years (manageable, not too bothersome, the cat seemed “fine on his own”), but over the last year or two, the vomiting had become more concerning. Daily, sometimes. There we went to the Real Life Vet, to have the vet feel his stomach (the cat’s, not his) and look at his ears (ditto) and then send us home with a bill for eight thousand pounds with the verdict that There was nothing physically wrong with him. (The cat.)
That’s where Google Vet came into its own. Because there’s nothing the Internet does better than feeding you unverified anecdotal material and possible misinformation that has been fed into the system by billions of people who may or may not be sane: and from within this quagmire of brain effluvium something so revealing came up. , so absolutely precise, that I even applauded.
Mr. Bear was not vomiting at all: he was regurgitating his food! This should have been obvious because the piles of diseased food actually looked and smelled exactly like his food, right down to the precise shape of the kibble and the fact that some still had dry, dusty surfaces, but he hadn’t actually put two and two together.
God bless Google Vet.
Once I learned this, that Mr. Bear was regurgitating his food shortly after eating it (gorging), instead of slowly dying from something the vets weren’t detecting in their tests, I set about fixing the problem. And here, finally, after almost a thousand words in the post, is the useful part: how I kept my cat from getting sick.
I lifted the cat bowl off the floor.
I know! Damn hell. Could the solution be simpler? At first I thought the cat was eating too fast (gobbling greedily) and took out one of those puzzle bowls to see if slowing down would stop the vomiting. Do you know those pet bowls with the noble parts inside?
It didn’t work. Vomiting volume and frequency were reduced, but the problem was not eradicated. I have to say that I was quite discouraged by this: “slow down feeding” seemed to be the most promoted solution on Google Vet, and I was sure that Mr Bear’s enthusiastic fast feeding had been the culprit. My mind returned grimly to the incurable diseases of cats.
But then I read something else, something about certain cats, especially larger ones, regurgitating food because of the angle at which they have to eat when a dish is placed on the floor. There was a diagram (unfortunately I can’t find it now) that showed the cross section of a cat’s head and neck and demonstrated the fact that food had to go up the throat almost vertically to get past the curve and into the digestive system. .
I’m sure the accompanying article even said something like, “Imagine if YOU had to eat upside down! That’s what a cat feels when you place the bowl on the floor! Which seemed a little dramatic and far-fetched, actually, but it stuck in my mind. A bit like food getting stuck in a cat’s neck!
In any case, it was worth a try, and that same morning I placed five paperback books under the cat’s bowl, raising it so that it could chew quietly without having to contort. Have you vomited since then? Almost never. I don’t even think it was a handful of times. Probably only the three times I’ve gone to write about it, which is definitely a jinx situation rather than a relapse.
Cat vom is simply no longer part of our lives: we have gone from practically everyday to something surprising. (Actually, it usually happens if we’ve been away; it’s like he goes on a hunger strike and then gorges himself once we get back.)
In the end we bought a suitable raised bowl and took the paperbacks with us. I bought this one. here from Amazon (affiliate link), and my only regret is not having Googled more extensively sooner.
I’ll also tell you something else: while he was there, I changed his food. After twelve full years of feeding him what the breeder had given him (Royal Canin British Shorthair) I decided to do some research and see if that was the best or if he had simply blindly followed the advice of someone who may not have done his own research in the first place.
Side story: When my dog was little, he had terrible stomach problems. Fancy dog foods like the ones you get now (hand-delivered to your door, no less! Using expensive cuts of fresh meat!) barely existed when we first got it and the idea of “grain-free” pet foods , those that no longer existed. They were just full of all kinds of shit and sawdust and whatever else they probably put in some of them, they were pretty specific.
But he was very bad at the widely available dry dog food, so I spent quite a bit of time trying to find him something he could tolerate. And I found this brilliant website that rates different dog foods based on ingredients and percentage of useful nutrients etc. All about dog food. I highly recommend it; You can even add your dog’s details now to try to find a suitable food. When I first used it, it was a very basic site.
All about dog food
Anyway, this website gives you a percentage rating for each dog food and tells you what’s good about it and what’s not; For example, some Pedigree foods rate 19% (which is not very good, obviously); other brands, such as Aatu, rate at 80%. Others get even higher scores. It’s worth checking out if you’re looking to change your dog’s food or are just curious what’s in the one you’re using. It ended up being a really helpful way for us to find a dog food that Dexter (the cockapoo) could tolerate and it also gives the approximate price of the food per day so you can easily weigh things up.
I remembered this site when I was playing with the cat in the bowls and wondered if there was a cat food equivalent and here:
petfoodexpert.com
Hurrah! It’s not exactly the same site, but it’s pretty similar, unbiased, and has a useful percentage rating. Using your information, I narrowed down my food options for Mr Bear to around five options and then calculated the cost per kilo of each. I ended up choosing Orijen Original, which had the highest ingredient score at the most desirable price. In fact, Orijen’s cost per kilo (84% ingredient score) was only slightly higher than Royal Canin’s (36% ingredient score).
I tell you all this so as not to discourage you about the brand of food you use, or suggest that you change, I simply found it all very interesting and it seemed like a no-brainer to change the cat to something that was more nutritious. -rich and had less bulky filling, especially now that he is entering his Silver Fox years.
If you stayed until the end, then congratulations, especially if you don’t have a cat, or even like them, but continue on to see how it all ended. Share this post with cat owners, if they too have to endure the regurgitation rituals I described above. Again, I would like to emphasize that all of this is just personal experience and is not a substitute for real advice from an expert.
The comments section is open for all light-hearted discussions about dogs and cats. See you there!
