Q: I have had it! I love my Ragdoll cat, Harry, but I am having huge issues with him throwing up hairballs all over my house. I find them in the hallway, in the TV room and even in the kitchen. They make me lose my appetite and he sounds like he is dying when he throws them up. What should I do to stop them? I love Harry but I can't step on another cold slimy hairball again.
A: I love cats (especially my own feline foursome) but they do come with some issues at times that we humans don't understand or care to deal with. Hairballs certainly do come to mind as one of them. Let me explain to you why Harry is producing hairballs. Then we will go over some management tools that might help.
Cats will groom or lick their fur or the fur of their housemates to keep themselves clean. It removes old hair, dirt and even foreign bodies. The hair they lick gets entangled on the barbs of their tongues and is swallowed. See, that sand-paper tongue does have a purpose. In a normal cat, that does a normal amount of grooming, the swallowed hair mixes with normal ingesta in the stomach and passes down through the GI tract and out with the feces.
In some cats this normal chain of events does not happen. It is my job to figure out why. Often times for a variety of reasons cats will over groom. This can be due to a medical reason such as fleas on their skin, allergic skin disease and pain. Pain is so hard to understand in the cat. They don't tell you what hurts. We know they experience pain with urinary issues, arthritis, oral disease and abdominal conditions. In older cats we worry about intestinal out flow obstruction issues such as IBD and lymphoma that may be affecting food and hair passage in the gut. If any of these reasons are to blame, treating Harry appropriately should cause him to groom less and therefore have less hairballs.
There are some behavioral issues that may be causing him to over groom too. Anxiety and emotional stressors such as moving, vacations, schedule changes and new animals in the house or even outside looking in your windows can cause a cat to groom more often or for longer times. It is a coping mechanism. But all coping mechanisms have some consequences.
What do you do as an owner? The first line of treatment is you. Check out your cat. Does he have fleas or skin issues? Note his appetite and litter box habits. Have they changed? Is he feeling thinner to you? Has anything else changed in his world that could be upsetting him? In cats, this answer is always yes, but it is up to us to figure out how truly upset he has become due to the change that has occurred. These are things you can bring to the attention of your veterinarian to help with the medical and behavioral treatment.
Other things you can also try on your own if your veterinarian finds him to be healthy and happy is a simple hair removal or grooming. We often give long haired cats what we call a "lion cut" complete with a poof on the end of their tail and a full mane with the remaining hair shaved close to the torso. This physically cuts down on the hair they ingest and may help with some hairball issues. I think they look cute to this way too.
The over-the-counter hairball remedies and diets may or may not help. The theory is they envelop the abundance of hair in the stomach with a jelly-like substance so it will slide down the tract like it is supposed to. There is not a lot of science to report how effective this treatment is. I know it will not hurt a cat. If you think it helps, it is OK to try it. But remember, what will definitely help is to decrease the amount of hair that is going into the stomach of Harry. Do that and your "slimy presents" all over your house will be a thing of the past. Good luck.
Send questions for Dr. Allison Dascoli to "Ask the Vet," Charleston Gazette-Mail, 1001 Virginia St. E., Charleston, WV 25301 or email them to askthevet@dailymailwv.com. Comments or suggestions can be submitted the same way.