How Do I Get My Cat To Slow Diwn When Eating? Regurgitating...help

I have a 1 year old cat...recently she has started vomiting/ regurgitating A LOT after eating.
I used to feed her a 3 oz can of wet food + 1/8 cup of dry food twice a day. (So total food per day was two 3 oz cans wet food plus 1/4 cup dry food per day).

Of note, during each twice daily feeding, I would feed her a half can portion, then about 15-20 min after she was done with that, I would give her the other half can. Then, about 20 min later, I would give her the 1/8 cup dry.

I tried to get my fiance to do the same but he is really bad about just dumping all her food down all at same time.

In any case though, even me spacing out food didn't seem to help. She started chucking food back up every other day,
sonetimes daily, even though I spaced her food.Also, she seemed to leave a lot if food and not eat it...I think her metabolism has slowed down as she matured from kitten to cat...so probably, now she needs less food?

I have reduced her to 1 can wet food daily. She eats the 1/2 can twice a day, and I space it out in two 1/4 cup servings. Then, once she finishes, (sonetimes she won't) she gets 1/8 cup dry food. She has *mostly* been doing a LOT better with this. She only vomited a couple of times this padt month as opposed to almost every day.

Another note...she is indoor only cat...no other cats in household....no other pets, eithet, so she has no competition. Also has had all her shots, dewormed, came clean on fecal test a few months ago, so shouldnt have worms. She regurgitated every brand of food i gave her, from iams to fancy feast to blue buffalo.

Unfortunately, despite everything i did to give her wet food as kitten she prefers her stupid dry food. Costco kirkland cat brand. She also seemed to prefer any brand dry i gave her to any brand wet. I dont mind her eating dry but i want her to eat wet, too. When my fiance gave her all food at same time, she wolfs down dry, ignores wet and leaves it to rot. If i dont make her eat wet first, she would be eating only the 100 cal of dry per day and let wet rot.

I think she is regurgitating more than vomitting cuz she sucks dry food down like vaccum, no chewing and upchucks whole, undigested kibbles soon after eating.

Recently, during the couple times this month she vomitted, it was dry food, not wet.
I wonder if she sucks it down so fast bc she likes it better and I restrict her from it to force her to eat wet food?

I trued giving her food puzzle (water bottle with hole and kibbles inside) to slow her down...but shes not the brightest of kitties and she gave up after a few min...

Any other ideas to slow down dry food guzzling?
And is 200 cal/day enough for 1 year spayed indoor female (currently 9 pounds)?

Some cats won't eat wet food, just like some bfs won't follow requests even to keep the cat from hurling. Chewy.com has some slow feeding bowls for dogs. They might work for your cat unless your
cat doesn't like her whiskers to touch the sides of the bowl. You can try putting ping pong balls in her bowl. Hunting around the balls slows her eating speed. You could get a cookie sheet with the slightly raised sides (about 1/8th of an inch) and spread her food out in that.

Hopefully, in time, your bf will catch on that taking care of someone - person or cat means paying attention to the details.

Our kitty Olive recently was having a vomiting / regurgitating issue. She’s always been very food motivated, and she seems to really fatten on any dry at all.

Our other kitty was not switched to wet food so we were leaving kibble our for him. She ate it too, and then would scarf and barf after eating a wet food meal. We took her to the vet when she was borking every other day and she was healthy. The vet did mention IBD but she only has this issue because of eating too fast and no other IBD symptoms.

In the end we took away all dry and thankfully we were able to switch our other guy to wet food meals as well. This almost enticing fixed the issue. She still eats too fast, but she’s not full of kibble and doesn’t vomit as often. I know it’s difficult but it really helped us.

I've read somewhere that it's not recommended to feed both wet and dry within 2h period of time, because they are digested very differently and the mix may cause stomach issues. If I were you, I'd try to feed her wet only, and if it's not possible due to financial reasons, I'd feed her wet in the morning and dry in the evening (or other way round).

Cats really aren't meant to take two giant food bombs a day. Left to their own, they'll prefer about a dozen smaller meals a day. Obviously this isn't sustainable for you. But I would consider adding a late night meal and possibly even a second breakfast depending on how much time you have in the mornings. Back before my Krista's recent struggles, she was doing well on a four a day schedule of 5am (I can't talk her out of this one), 9am, 7pm and 11pm. Every cat is different but I find my (almost back to) 9 lbs Krista currently has a 1.5 oz stomach and requires almost 300 calories (but she's also on a weight gain program since she lost a lot to IBD and dental issues.) That means I am currently feeding her six times a day. This will come down as I continue to grow her portion size by a couple of grams per week. Eventually I should be able to collapse a couple of meals onto each other. Or I'll end up getting the fur pig a timed feeder so I can get out of the 2am and 2pm meals.

Dry food and wet food should not be given in the same meals. The dry food comes out of the stomach the wrong pH for efficient digestion. Dry and wet together would make the wet less digestible. Now dry fed cats only may be able to adjust to this by producing more stomach acid which may not be the best solution in the long-term if we're talking about gut health. I would either eliminate the dry or reduce the importance of it in her diet. Maybe get her a timed feeder to allow her to eat a small amount of dry between meals. Enough to keep her from waking you but not so much as to disrupt her appetite for the wet food.

Mouse sometimes scoffs down his dry food too quickly and is prone to bringing up little piles of half digested food shortly afterwards. Like M Mow Mow -^-^- he wasn't persistent enough with food games so I gave up on those. I am wondering about textured base food bowls that make it harder to eat quickly though... Not sure how easy they are to keep clean.

Over time I've figured Mouse regurgitated more when he's molting (which he doesn't do most of the time) and things settle once he gets the fur ball out. That and when he has a sore mouth - probably because his dry food is prescription stuff that has to be crunched up before he swallows and if his mouth is sore it will be too big to go down properly.

It's difficult when something is new and a sign of possible illness but over time if you can figure out if there are patterns with the regurgitating it can help reduce the number of times you rush off to the vet.

I have an indoor cat that does the EXACT same thing. I was concerned that maybe she had a kidney issue (I had one die from kidney failure), and asked my vet about it. He said more than likely it was not kidney related since she didn’t have any of the other symptoms. Over the years, I’ve kind of figured out that maybe she just has an issue with her throat/ esophagus (sp?) area. What works best for me and her is only feed her a few kibbles of food at a time. I get those little plastic 2oz containers from Walmart with the lids and just put enough food to cover the bottom. Whenever she is hungry, she comes hunts us up and jumps on her feeding area and we dump a container in her bowl. Don’t get me wrong, this hasn’t totally stopped her from getting sick, but it has helped tremendously.
Good luck with your baby!!

One thing that helped my Jasmine was raising her bowl off the ground so she had to stand to eat it. It significantly reduced how much she regurgitated. You could also give her dry food portion in a puzzle feeder, ball, etc so she will naturally have to slow down. This will also stimulate her mind some, as well as possibly encourage her to eat the easier to obtain wet food

Some ideas:

https://www.chewy.com/doc-phoebes-cat-co-indoor-hunting-cat/dp/179102

https://www.chewy.com/trixie-activity-strategy-game-tunnel/dp/134683

https://www.chewy.com/petsafe-slimcat-interactive-cat/dp/48573

Mow Mow -^-^- said:

I have a 1 year old cat...recently she has started vomiting/ regurgitating A LOT after eating.

Click to expand...

It could be due to that she's eating too fast. By eating too fast, they take in a lot of air and therefore regurgitate after that.

Try feeding her small amounts like a tablespoon at a time till she finishes what she's supposed to eat. After she has finished the tablespoon, pause for awhile and give her another. This way will stop her from eating too fast without stopping.

Best is give her wet food as wet food contains real meat and have more proteins and wet food keeps a cat hydrated.

A couple of things that might help with her vomiting after eating dry food. First look for kibble that comes in large pieces so she needs to take the time to actually chew it. Second is to buy her a “slow bowl”, like the one shown, available on Amazon. Because of the swirls in the bowl each piece has to be scooped out with a paw before it can be eaten. This greatly slows down the speed at which the cat can eat.