Listen to the vet....keep their fur short....less likely to form a ball when the strands are short...Good Luck!
My cats ate “Laxatone” off my fingers; but you can also dab it on their paws and then they lick it off. It helped them pass hairballs. The last cat died at age 21 and a half.
Try the Furminator. I have a cat w/ 40,000 layers of down below 4000 layers of fur (she also just had surgery as well, but not for that).
I used to have to cut the “balls of dreadlocks” off before my land lord told me about the Furminator.
Took em right off. If your dog is that hairy, do it outside, a few times a week to start.
Works like a charm.
Had/still have a maine coon. Vet number one said he had a tumor. Vet number two took a long pair of tweezers into his butt and pulled out a nine inch long mass of hair and poop. Now he eats. Oh, he’s 18. The cat, not the vet.
My parents have a similar, ongoing problem with a long-haired cat. Mom brushes it several times a day, but the cat still throws up hairballs and food and gets blockages.
Maybe your cat is just one that can’t deal with the fur, especially if it’s washing the dog! Perhaps it’s nerves: our old Agnes had a compulsive licking problem when Anoreth was born. The vet gave her a sedative injection. Maybe your cat is reacting to the change of environment, and a shot to mellow it out for a month or so would help.
Soft butter is good. Cats like it.
Here are some suggestions from the net:
http://www.earthclinic.com/Pets/hairballs.html
btw, cats have fur, hence shouldn’t they be called ‘furballs’?
This is by no means a sure cure, but try an oily diet, tuna packed in oil, add fish oil to regular canned cat food, etc. He needs a diet that helps the fur to move through his system.
I have a couple of long hair cats and they were having issues with hairballs. None cared for the hairball remedy, but I would smear it into their paw so they were forced to lick it off. I also switched their dry food to a hairball remedy. This seems to have solved a lot of the problem.
change the diet to hairball formula, dry food.
use the tiny cans of wet food but when the little thing snacks it can snack on hairball formula.
Comb the cat a couple of times a week if not daily. It will keep the amount of hair ingested down and allow it to pass.
had the same problem and those two things resolved it.
Ingesting hair is a perpetual problem with cats.
The vet’s suggestion of shaving the critters will work, however, if you don’t want to you can always give them hairball formula cat food. Or add the hair dissolving ingredient to the food yourself.
I did that with our cat and he wouldn’t eat if for a couple of days. he eventually overcame his hunger and will eat it now.
You can make any food into a hairball formula food the same way the pet food companies do.
Add raw pineapple juice or raw papaya juice to the food. Both contain juices an enzyme that dissolves hair.
It can’t be pasteurized or cooked heating will destroy the enzyme.
Ingesting hair is a perpetual problem with cats.
The vet’s suggestion of shaving the critters will work, however, if you don’t want to you can always give them hairball formula cat food. Or add the hair dissolving ingredient to the food yourself.
I did that with our cat and he wouldn’t eat if for a couple of days. he eventually overcame his hunger and will eat it now.
You can make any food into a hairball formula food the same way the pet food companies do.
Add raw pineapple juice or raw papaya juice to the food. Both contain juices an enzyme that dissolves hair.
It can’t be pasteurized or cooked heating will destroy the enzyme.
Laxatone is great. Sometimes they like it, sometimes you have to put it on their paws. Buy a big tube and give it to the cat about once a week.
Just curious, before the surgery, what did the vet tell you he saw from the x-ray?
Thanks.
I've already got the “furminator” brush but I really haven't used it often enough.
He's been on the anti hairball dry food for a few months. He prefers dry and never really eats a lot of wet food.
The vet pulled a large ball of fur out of his stomach. He was vomiting but couldn't expel the mass.
I'll try to find the laxatone. The vet said he's also been constipated, they checked and he had hard/dry feces that he hadn't passed.
We just got through with a severe flea problem. Due to that, our twenty year old cat ended up anemic and her kidneys shut down. We had to put her down on the same day we received our HHG delivery. Due to all the related issues, my wife and I still haven't processed the loss of one pet. We're not capable of dealing with the loss of another.
Ping.
I have had kittehs that will lick the hairball treatment from my fingers and ones I have to force them to eat it. If you get it in their mouth or on the fur around their mouth, it works.
Lke another freeper mentioned, try giving the cat a pat of butter on a plate once a day, let him lick it.
Cats are pure carnivores; they can’t digest carbs. The dry, pasty, carb-heavy cat food most of them eat contributes to hairball formation, and IMO, is a big reason so many cats develop diabetes. If you feed your baby an all meat food, like Blue Buffalo wild, he shouldn’t be bothered with hairballs anymore.