Hairball food advice

[TSBLD]

Looking for some hairball advice. My cat is almost 10. She started having bad hairball issues last year. Up til then, she had no health problems whatsoever. We've been to the vet (work at one), and she's had plenty of diagnostics and xrays done, and everything with her is normal.

We've tried Laxatone, but she doesn't like it. If it isn't chicken in chunks/slices/gravy, she won't eat it.

For food, she was eating wet Crave til that was discontinued in 2020. Then we switched to wet Nutro, and then that had supply problems. I couldn't find anything she liked, so she ate a mix of wet ONP and wet Simply Nourish (brands I get discounted at my work). Then Nutro came back in stock December 2021. That's when the vomiting started. She was throwing up one day every week, which was very unlike her because she is not a cat who ever throws up.

My vet recommended trying hairball food. I didn't like the idea of switching to a lower tier brand. She's eaten grain free since I had her at 1 yr old. I tried different wet hairball foods. She rejected all, but I was surprised that she likes Purina Pro Plan chicken pate. She now gets that along with a bit of ONP dry food (grain free).

Amazingly, the new food reduced the hairballs and she vomits maybe once a month or less.

Recently I thought about switching back to the old Nutro food. I bought a case a few weeks ago, and she started throwing up within days. Possibly it could have been from the food change. I'm thinking Nutro could be the problem itself, since none of this was an issue til I started feeding Nutro. We had used it for a few years from 2014 to 2016ish, but I stopped due to quality issues. Anyway, I used up the Nutro I bought, and went back to Purina. No more hairballs, altho she did have a big one today.

So I guess my questions are...I feel like she does great w/ Pro Plan, but it makes her poop more like pellets and not the normal formed (and stinky) poop she had while eating the other brands. I've read some things online about hairball food not being suitable for being fed long term, but as with all things on the net, I'm skeptical of what I read. Any thoughts on that?

And has anyone experienced these issues w/ Nutro causing vomiting? I switched to it because it's a pretty cut-and-dry formula w/o a lot of extra stuff, and my cat was happy to eat it.

Are there any other options I could give her for hairballs, or should we be considering any health concerns?

 

[FeebysOwner]

Hi. I am of the mindset that any food supposedly specialized for hairballs really doesn't do much of anything. Wet foods will likely do better due to the moisture than any dry food. You can always compare ingredients and see what the differences are (if any).

A dab of butter/margarine to be licked from your finger or on your cat's paw a couple times of week, or a couple of drops of olive oil mixed with the wet food would probably be just as effective, if not more. Either of those could also help with making her stool softer as well. While 'less stinky' is good, hard pellets for stool is not so good. Daily brushings to remove excess hair is also a good way to reduce/stop hairballs.

I buy the single serving Nutro for Feeby, and have not had any issue with her vomiting from them. But that doesn't mean your cat doesn't have some issue with one of the ingredients, or even the way they process their food. Again, the best way to see if you can find issues is to compare the ingredients to other foods that she does not vomit from.

At your cat's age, the digestive system slows down - just like it does with humans as they age - so, she just may need a boost of something to keep things 'moving along'. Have you considered trying a probiotic to see if that might help any?

 

[LTS3]

Here's info on treating hairballs: How Best to Manage Hairballs

A raw egg yolk (no egg white) or a hard cooked whole egg (your choice of cooking method. Boil is probably easiest) that is mashed up and egg yolk lecithin is supposed to help.

 

[Alldara]

TSBLD
Both my cats vomited on Nurto and I never tried tit again. This was years ago. Nobel and Lily had stomachs of steel.

I did find now that Purina has made my cat's poo harder as well, especially my older cat. But softer than Royal Canin. I've only been with Purina since they removed a ton of grains from their products.

You can add some ground flax seed or pumpkin and/or a bit of fish oil to her food to see if that helps. An ideal poo needs a mix of water, oil, and fibre. You might need to play with what's going on.

A Wureva package with pumpkin could be a good option too. They fibre can help with hairballs.

I also found that those glove brushes took a TON more extra hair off the cats without being a bother to them. Brushing is always helpful to reduce hairballs.

 

[daftcat75]

Hairballs can be an early sign of IBD. I argued with Betty’s internal medicine specialist (yes the doctor I paid extra to have her seen by) that it couldn’t be IBD because it’s only ever hairballs. No food vomits and no poop issues. We struggled with different foods and hairball remedies. But at the end of the day, the ultrasound showed significant inflammation. And the endoscopy also showed inflammation. But thankfully not cancer. Yet. That’s always a possibility that IBD can become lymphoma because cancer often shows up in sites of uncontrolled inflammation.

So sure. Try egg yolk or egg yolk powder (should also help soften the poops). Betty liked Pet Naturals of Vermont hairball chews. Until she didn’t. But it wasn’t until I stopped arguing with the IM about what IBD should look like and instead started the steroids that Betty has finally found meaningful relief. Our journey isn’t over because I can’t leave her at the “not an insignificant dose of pred” (the IM’s way of avoiding saying this is a high-ish dose.) But six weeks without a hairball was better than any food or remedy I’ve tried. She just started the pred taper last night. One day in is far too soon to say anything. But I’m hopeful that all that relief time was also healing time.

My recommendations:

1. Get yours an ultrasound. Hairballs can often be an early warning sign of IBD. IBD isn’t diagnosed with blood tests or X-rays which is why it may not have been detected with the care she’s had to date.
2. If the ultrasound reveals inflammation, you have a few choices. You can do a biopsy either endoscopic or surgical. You can assume IBD and ask your vet to consider lymphoma if IBD treatment doesn’t work. I call this an A-B treatment plan. Rather than putting your cat through the stress, expense, and recovery of a biopsy, you treat it like A. And if that doesn’t work, you add in the B treatment.
3. Reducing or skipping the dry food altogether should both help with the hairballs and the poops. Dry food is only good for cost and convenience. And unfortunately, you often pay back both in health issues later in life. I suspect from Betty’s biome testing that she was a dry food addict before I adopted her. Gut biome all askew towards a high carb diet. Sadly, the food she really loves is Hills I/D stew in vegetables. High in carbs. But it’s not dry food. And Betty doesn’t show signs of intolerance or allergy. So I’m assuming her kibble years before me caused the damage that I’m now paying for. I adopted Betty in January and have been paying “hairball” vet bills until I finally accepted her IBD diagnosis. Ultrasound and endoscopy wasn’t cheap. But ER visits add up too.
4. Egg yolk or egg yolk powder, digestive enzymes (Optagest is a good brand), and hairball treats (Pet Naturals of Vermont is a good one when they are fresh and your cat will eat them because they are a hydrolyzed chicken protein meaning even if she has a chicken allergy, these have the chicken signature—what the immune system keys on—processed out of them.) These are all water pistols at best if IBD is what you’re really dealing with. So yeah. Try them because they might extend her hairball interval and perhaps make them less severe. But definitely rule in or rule out IBD/lymphoma. I know these tests often have lag time to schedule them and lag time to schedule the next test if needed. It could take time to get to a treatment plan. In that time, you can explore these assists. But knowing it takes time to run the IBD tests means you should schedule those now rather than being too stubborn trying the alternatives first. Because there’s always another thing to try. Betty and I lost so many months trying alternatives.
5. Of those alternatives, the absolute best we tried and still use even though it’s not strong enough on its own to stop the hairballs is AnimalBiome.com Gut Health Testing and Gut Restore Supplement. This is only a useful option if you can pill or have her pill herself reliably. This is not a supplement you can open and mix into her food. She will not appreciate it and it won’t work anyway. Gut Health Testing will tell you the state of her gut biome like no other veterinary test can reveal. They will send you a kit to collect and return a sample. In a few weeks, they will send you a report that analyzes her gut biome richness, diversity, and overall health. They will also include recommendations to improve her health. And because she’s already having hairballs, it’s not a bad idea to simply start the Gut Restore Supplement proactively while you are waiting for that report. The Gut Restore Supplement is FMT (fecal microbiota transplant) pills. It is poop samples from carefully screened healthy donor cats. This is why you can’t open the pills into food. She won’t enjoy them and her stomach acid will kill the contents before they had a chance to get where they are needed. If you can give these pills daily, this is so much better than any probiotic on the market. In the first few weeks since I started Betty on them, I saw significant improvements in her appetite and reduction in nausea. They weren’t enough to keep her off steroids. But I’ve seen the difference they make when I paused them between reports.

Bonus: Even if she’s not easy to pill, she can learn to pill herself. Betty is such a pro at taking pills now. She knows the routine. I dip a capsule in A/D, place it on the carpet, and she takes it up and swallows it. When we first started she would try to lick the A/D off and leave the capsule behind. She didn’t get her meal until she took her capsules. She learned. It’s been forever since we’ve had a “lick and flick.” For any pills she takes, I simply repack them into size five or four capsules (bigger number = smaller capsule.) She doesn’t even try to chew the capsule anymore so she never tastes her meds now.

 

[maggie101]

Looking for some hairball advice. My cat is almost 10. She started having bad hairball issues last year. Up til then, she had no health problems whatsoever. We've been to the vet (work at one), and she's had plenty of diagnostics and xrays done, and everything with her is normal.

We've tried Laxatone, but she doesn't like it. If it isn't chicken in chunks/slices/gravy, she won't eat it.

For food, she was eating wet Crave til that was discontinued in 2020. Then we switched to wet Nutro, and then that had supply problems. I couldn't find anything she liked, so she ate a mix of wet ONP and wet Simply Nourish (brands I get discounted at my work). Then Nutro came back in stock December 2021. That's when the vomiting started. She was throwing up one day every week, which was very unlike her because she is not a cat who ever throws up.

My vet recommended trying hairball food. I didn't like the idea of switching to a lower tier brand. She's eaten grain free since I had her at 1 yr old. I tried different wet hairball foods. She rejected all, but I was surprised that she likes Purina Pro Plan chicken pate. She now gets that along with a bit of ONP dry food (grain free).

Amazingly, the new food reduced the hairballs and she vomits maybe once a month or less.

Recently I thought about switching back to the old Nutro food. I bought a case a few weeks ago, and she started throwing up within days. Possibly it could have been from the food change. I'm thinking Nutro could be the problem itself, since none of this was an issue til I started feeding Nutro. We had used it for a few years from 2014 to 2016ish, but I stopped due to quality issues. Anyway, I used up the Nutro I bought, and went back to Purina. No more hairballs, altho she did have a big one today.

So I guess my questions are...I feel like she does great w/ Pro Plan, but it makes her poop more like pellets and not the normal formed (and stinky) poop she had while eating the other brands. I've read some things online about hairball food not being suitable for being fed long term, but as with all things on the net, I'm skeptical of what I read. Any thoughts on that?

And has anyone experienced these issues w/ Nutro causing vomiting? I switched to it because it's a pretty cut-and-dry formula w/o a lot of extra stuff, and my cat was happy to eat it.

Are there any other options I could give her for hairballs, or should we be considering any health concerns?

My cat peaches does fine on nutro perfect portions cuts in gravy but not pate. It helps to cut it in pieces. Turkey cuts has been out of stock but I found it on Amazon if you buy a set,chicken and turkey

 

[strider rose]

TSBLD im sorry that your cats are having issues with hairballs ... i feed my cats iams weight and hairball control dry food for indoor cats

 

[MookieMum]

I just came on this site to share our story so hopefully it might help another cat owner and this food may help your cat also. We have a long haired 18 year old male cat. A few years ago he developed diabetes and was on insulin for about 6 months until going into remission. Before his diagnosis he was always (successfully) throwing up hairballs, however, one time he was very lethargic and not eating for a day, and prior to that had been throwing up but no hairballs present, and then he passed a large hair ball. Right after that he was fine. Recently his diabetes came back and he was on insulin again - then he became very sick again, lethargic and not eating for a day, we thought the worst and assume kidney or liver failure given his age and diabetes and took him to the vet immediately, after $3500 in blood work, abdominal ultra sound, several days on IV care, etc. he was deemed to be fine (especially for his age) and had gone into remission again.......So he came home but was still not feeling well, once again he passed a HUGE hairball. We immediately switched his food to Royal Canin Hairball Care Dry catfood, and after several weeks he is literally so healthy it is crazy. He has not thrown up since and continually passes small hairballs in his stool (which seem to not bother him at all) he is literally acting happier than he has in YEARS. He runs and plays and his tail is up all the time, playing with balls and toys, he is part dog we are sure. So, I just wanted to share this with anyone struggling with their cat that may have these issues. He has a specific type of hair so we think that adds to his hairball issues, when we brush him no hair comes out on the brush, it is very dense and he does not matte at all. The food has Psyllium Seed Husk which is effective for humans with digestive issues too so it is working great!