My cat throws up dry food but not her wet food.

[xxikayixx]

My cat had some issues last month with a possible infection in her intestines. The doctors could not diagnose her and thought it was toxoplasmosis. We gave her prescription medication for 3 weeks. 2x a day orally.

She is better now and has been off the medication for about a week. During that period of time we fed her only wet food because she almost died during her infection and she could barely eat as it was.

Now that she is better we still feed her 95% wet food but at night time she eats her dry. When we wake up in the morning she has thrown up the dry food she eats.

I have tried wetting her food before bed but she never eats it all and I"m afraid it's going to mold if left too long. I'm kind of at a loss. She is on a grain free diet for obvious reasons but also because she had major allergies awhile back and I started eliminating scents from litters, candles in the home to no grains in her diet. Not sure which elimination stopped her issues but she is purely on a grain free diet and her food costs are over 55$ a month just in wet food.

I am wondering if she just cannot take the dry due to her intestinal infection she had or it's now so sensitive she cannot eat it. She has no issues with the wet food.

I work from home so it is no issue in feeding her small amounts 10x a day (She cannot eat large meals at once due to scarfing her food) but It worries me when she's hungry at night and throws up what she ate.

Any thoughts?

 

[vball91]

Hi and welcome to TCS. It is entirely possible that due to the infection and allergies that she is not able to tolerate dry foods. All dry foods have to have some sort of starch to bind them, so even though they are grain free, they are not starch free. Dry food is also harder on the digestive system and takes longer to digest. Wet food in general is much healthier for cats anyway, so if you can eliminate the dry food completely, I would. I would NOT recommend wetting dry food and leaving it overnight due to bacterial growth concerns.

If you are concerned with her being hungry overnight, you could leave her a little freeze-dried meat snacks (Whole Life, Pure Bites or Etta Says) or freeze-dried raw food like Stella & Chewy's.

 

[maewkaew]

 It may be a food sensitivity issue to something in the food. 

But also sometimes cats just gobble dry food too fast  and then regurgitate .    It can help to slow down their eating by putting 3 golf balls in the dish so they have to move them around to get the food.   ( That is what my old vet told me  for my cat who had this problem 20 years ago .  He pulled out 3 golf balls out of a drawer and handed them to me.  and I tried it and it worked!  ) 

 Or you could just stop feeding the dry food?  Cats usually would not need to have food available all night  and she might not like it at first but she could probably get used to it. 

 

[goholistic]

The freeze dried food is a great idea for overnight munchies.

I feed my cats wet and dry, although I would prefer all wet and advocate all wet to others when it is feasible. A few years ago, I used to feed my cats a dry food that my one cat would regurgitate EVERY time he ate it. After some trial and error with other foods, I suspected it was the venison in it.

If you don't mind me asking, what dry food is she throwing up? There could be another ingredient that she is not tolerating. Or, like vball91 said, she's just not able to tolerate dry foods in general anymore. Dry food is much harder on the digestive system.

 

[xxikayixx]

I have gone back and forth between Natures Variety- Grain free Healthy Weight and Natures Recipe Indoor Formula.
 

 

[goholistic]

I know you mentioned she had major allergies awhile back. Were they mostly to grains? I did a quick check of the ingredients list for each of the two dry foods you mentioned, and I see that they both contain a fish meal. That was the one thing that stood out to me. There are many cats that have issues with fish products.

Like I said, it's possible that it's not the food at all, but just her sensitive tummy.
 

 

[xxikayixx]

I never found out what the allergies were too. Her symptoms were excessive grooming to her left hind leg.

I tried switching to the clay unscented litter, and changing her off of grained foods at the same time. During that period she get better about it.. so it could of been the grains or an allergy to scents.

I do feed her wet chicken and fish flavor food from Natures Recipe Grain free with no issues.

She is a mystery cat!