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To preface, I do have a vet appointment lined up, but I wanted to see if anyone else had experience with this instead of going into the appointment blind.
My 10(ish)-year-old cat has been throwing up almost every night in the early hours of the morning. He does have some history with this behavior. A year ago -- maybe around July 2020 -- is when he first started this pattern. However, I started giving him Meowbiotics' Hairball Buster (basically probiotics and fiber) in like August 2020, and that stopped the puking right in its tracks. Its efficacy lasted about six months, during which he threw up maybe two hairballs and nothing else. That brings us to the beginning of 2021, when he started the early morning puking again about 3-5 nights out of the week. The Hairball Buster isn't helping anymore.
His puke isn't that bile-smelling type. It's just clear with some fur in it and occasionally some small particles of what seem to me to be undigested food. If I'm awake right before he pukes, I will sometimes hear his stomach making gurgling noises for a minute or two beforehand.
I took him to his usual vet in March, whose response to this was a physical examination and "well, some cats are just pukey." I promptly fired my vet of nine years and found another one.
In addition to this issue, my cat needed his teeth cleaned, so in April the new vet did whatever pre-anethesia blood work is done for senior cats as well as a urine analysis. Everything came back normal. She suggested that his stomach was getting too empty overnight and that the acid might be irritating and thus causing him to throw up. I didn't want to put him on acid blockers at that point, so the vet suggested breaking up his dinner into two meals, giving him one of those meals before bed.
I tried it for a week or two, and it didn't help. It also made him absolutely obnoxious about food because suddenly he thought any time of day was time to eat.
Then I had issues getting his raw food, and he was on just canned food for a week and a half. During that time he didn't puke once, so I thought maybe the raw was being digested too quickly, and I took him off the raw and put him solely on canned food. Unfortunately, it started back up again. So the canned food didn't stop it or decrease the frequency, but the puking window did go from 3AM-6AM on raw food to 6AM-8AM on canned. He would really rather have raw food, though, and has become increasingly finicky about the canned food. So I just recently put him back on mostly raw since it's not like doing only canned was actually stopping him from puking.
Through all of this, he has acted totally normal. Appetite seems fine. He's always excited about his treats. He has no issues eating even just five minutes after he throws up. He has only once thrown up during the day over the past year, and it was just minutes before he was due to eat dinner, and it was the same clear liquid/fur combination.
Now that the background's out of the way, here are my questions:
(1) To those who have had experience with high stomach acidity in cats, is that what this sounds like?
(2) Does this sound like something else?
(3) Are there any tests I should ask for?
(4) I'm worried about how it would affect him having to be on acid blockers the rest of his life. Does anyone have experience with long-term use of them in cats? Could they be used as a temporary measure and he be weaned off after a while?
My 10(ish)-year-old cat has been throwing up almost every night in the early hours of the morning. He does have some history with this behavior. A year ago -- maybe around July 2020 -- is when he first started this pattern. However, I started giving him Meowbiotics' Hairball Buster (basically probiotics and fiber) in like August 2020, and that stopped the puking right in its tracks. Its efficacy lasted about six months, during which he threw up maybe two hairballs and nothing else. That brings us to the beginning of 2021, when he started the early morning puking again about 3-5 nights out of the week. The Hairball Buster isn't helping anymore.
His puke isn't that bile-smelling type. It's just clear with some fur in it and occasionally some small particles of what seem to me to be undigested food. If I'm awake right before he pukes, I will sometimes hear his stomach making gurgling noises for a minute or two beforehand.
I took him to his usual vet in March, whose response to this was a physical examination and "well, some cats are just pukey." I promptly fired my vet of nine years and found another one.
In addition to this issue, my cat needed his teeth cleaned, so in April the new vet did whatever pre-anethesia blood work is done for senior cats as well as a urine analysis. Everything came back normal. She suggested that his stomach was getting too empty overnight and that the acid might be irritating and thus causing him to throw up. I didn't want to put him on acid blockers at that point, so the vet suggested breaking up his dinner into two meals, giving him one of those meals before bed.
I tried it for a week or two, and it didn't help. It also made him absolutely obnoxious about food because suddenly he thought any time of day was time to eat.
Then I had issues getting his raw food, and he was on just canned food for a week and a half. During that time he didn't puke once, so I thought maybe the raw was being digested too quickly, and I took him off the raw and put him solely on canned food. Unfortunately, it started back up again. So the canned food didn't stop it or decrease the frequency, but the puking window did go from 3AM-6AM on raw food to 6AM-8AM on canned. He would really rather have raw food, though, and has become increasingly finicky about the canned food. So I just recently put him back on mostly raw since it's not like doing only canned was actually stopping him from puking.
Through all of this, he has acted totally normal. Appetite seems fine. He's always excited about his treats. He has no issues eating even just five minutes after he throws up. He has only once thrown up during the day over the past year, and it was just minutes before he was due to eat dinner, and it was the same clear liquid/fur combination.
Now that the background's out of the way, here are my questions:
(1) To those who have had experience with high stomach acidity in cats, is that what this sounds like?
(2) Does this sound like something else?
(3) Are there any tests I should ask for?
(4) I'm worried about how it would affect him having to be on acid blockers the rest of his life. Does anyone have experience with long-term use of them in cats? Could they be used as a temporary measure and he be weaned off after a while?