How do you get a cat to not throw up so often?

I’m not sure on the throwing up part, but I’d try feeding him wet food for a while until he puts on some weight if you can find a way to prevent the other cats from eating it too.

Edit: If he’s throwing up on a daily basis just read that try withholding food for about 12 hours and make sure he’s not sneaking scraps. If he’s still getting sick after not having food, then it could be a number of things that your vet would need to look at him for.
If it stops which is what we found with our previous cat then a new food should be introduced slowly.

Starve it.

Unfortunate side effect: dead cat

I have 2, 25 pound cats. I obviously do not follow that strategy.

Wow @mowens… I thought our 2 18lb cats were big!!

Get it to cut down on the binge drinking.

my boy cat throws up quite often… sometimes it’s a hairball gone wrong, but the majority of the time i have found it’s because he eats too fast. try feeding kitty smaller amounts and i’d go easy on the people food. my cats both love chicken or turkey from the deli and they seem to be able to handle it in small amounts… but definitely take him to the vet!

@Samantha_Rae – thanks. I don’t give them any people food… but I have a sneaking suspicion that he finds some here and there.

He actually seems to eat quite slowly… but I’ll pay more attention to that.

@Cupcake : i’d try to not leave scraps of food around… and also check your house plants. is he an outdoor cat? cats are allergic to things like dryer sheets, so i’d look into the household items that can harm them. good luck!

Brush your cat more often. Even if it’s not the primary reason it will help.

@Samantha_Rae – they are all indoor cats. We don’t leave food around much, but we should pay better attention. We don’t have houseplants. I’ll have to think about dryer sheets… I didn’t know that.

@tinyfaery – good idea. We’ve tried periodically bathing them too… but not often enough to know if it helped with the vomiting.

I wonder if the vomiting is stress-related, though. How many litterboxes do you have? How does your furry family get along?

If you have plants in the house that could be the problem. Some plants are toxic to cats and can cause vommiting. I used to have a bamboo plant in my bedroom, my cats would eat a little bit of a leaf and get sick. Also if the cat is puking in the same room and around the same spot then you need to use a stronger pet odor cleaner or when ever the cat is about to get sick or its stomach is upset it’ll go right in your husband’s office because it smells of vomit.

We have 2 litterboxes. The cats get along fine. He’s puked in every room of the house… but for the past 2–3 days it’s been the office (which he hadn’t puked in before… but he hangs out with my work-at-home husband more lately). He seems to throw up in whichever room he’s been hanging out… most often the living room, dining room or my son’s bedroom.

They’re brothers, and they don’t allow sleep if their bowls aren’t filled to their liking.

I had a cat that did that. She loved to eat, but threw up all the time. She was indoor, no health issues (well, she developed a thyroid issue when she was older), ate dry food. She lived to be 17 and got down to close to 2lbs towards the end of her life (she was a tiny cat) because she would just throw it all up. The Vet could never find anything wrong with her, other than the thyroid issue, which helped her keep weight on when she would take her meds.

I know it seems obvious, but have you had a stool check done? Could she have worms?
What kind of food the animals spews can be relevant to a vet, is it fresh and sweet, still formed or is it bile, or is it the food in a semi digested foul smelling condition.

I don’t think it is normal for an animal to throw up regularly, just seems as if there must be an underlying reason, although @casheroo says hers did it too.

@rooeytoo – I have their stool checked annually and they’ve never been found to have worms… but it’s always worth another check.

My 18½ year old cat used to ralf regularly. I switched her to baby food. She now eats 2 to 1 ratio of chicken and veggies to turkey, chicken, or beef. The vet thinks it may be the protien in cats foods ( I buy the best I can find for her, currently Royal Canin) that makes her ralf. She does still do it on occasion, and it is always an undigested food log.

She now thinks she shouldn’t have to stoop to eating dry, but during the day she nibbles. Good luck with your kitty.

At first I thought worms like @rooeytoo . Have you tried changing her food to a different brand? Some companies add different weird stuff that can interact funny with different cats. If your other cats can’t handle the change, you can feed them separately. At dinner time, shut the sick kitten into the office or another room with her food and let her eat. (I don’t know how you feed your cats but I feed mine at roughly regular times each day so mine has gotten used to only having food out at meal times.)

I don’t know if you said it above, but have you asked the vet about it? I know some vets, you can just call up to ask about these kinds of things, instead of doing a visit, for the advice. I had a cat who had an intestinal disease, not worms. We had just moved to a new house and thought her vomiting and attitude change were the result of the move. When we finally took her to the vet, we didn’t catch it in time and all we could do was hope the drugs would help. They didn’t. But there was a lot of vomiting and then her eventual shrinking as the result before she died. I’m not saying your cat has something serious but it is possible to be something serious we don’t know about.

I hope it’s not

One thing people do is to rub a small dab Vaseline on their cat’s paw. The cat will lick it off when he grooms himself. It will help aid in digestion and will keep him from throwing up hairballs and food.

Perhaps you are feeding him too much at once. In the way a cat fears starvation and gulps down too much food. Try feeding him smaller portions, more often. Also check for hairballs, in terms of feeding him a hairball treat now and then. You can buy dry food for sensitive tummys.

I had to put a smaller bowl upside down on top of the regular food bowl. It makes it harder for my wifes cat to eat too fast, and she doesn’t ralph so much now.

So after months, $1000 in vet bills and a recent ultrasound… we’ve discovered either inflammatory bowel disease or lymphoma. Probable biopsy to follow.

P.S. He’s much happier and friendlier with prescription vet food plus tuna fish.

Oh no @Cupcake! That’s horrible! Do you have pet insurance?

No pet insurance @andrew. We were ok with spending $1000. Hopefully the biopsy won’t be too bad and the treatment options are supposedly not very expensive.

We haven’t gotten the biopsy results back, but it was likely lymphoma. Nemo died 3 days after surgery (yesterday). Fortunately, he had a few months of special food and feeling good. Unfortunately, I miss him and I’m sad.

Thanks, everyone, for your input. I’m glad I brought him to the vet.

Oh, no. I’m so sorry for your loss. :(

Thanks @tinyfaery.

I’m so sorry :(

Thanks @casheroo.

I’m so very sorry. I still find myself in tears over my kitten that passed on march 11. She was with me for 19 wonderful years. I wish you the very best.

@stevenb I’m sorry you lost your kitty.

On a lighter note, I think I made friends with the vet. There’s always a silver lining.