Why Do Cats Vomit? A Vet Explains How to Help

hello my name is dr sarah wooten and i am a veterinarian and i am here today in this video to talk to you about a very common problem we see in our furry feline friends and that problem is vomiting so we're gonna talk about what causes it uh what the symptoms are how to differentiate it from other health conditions that might look similar and most importantly what to do about it so cat vomiting it is a common problem so if you have a cat that vomits and you're watching this video to try and get some help and some um enlightenment about what's going on rest assured my friend you are not alone especially with indoor cats this just seems to be an issue and in fact cat vomiting is so common that people think it's normal that's crazy right could you imagine if vomiting was so common in humans that we just thought it was normal that every day or every couple of days we're just like well i feel terrible yeah but that's normal right it's a normal part of my week well i could tell you that you would not think that's normal and even though it's really common in cats cat vomiting is never ever normal i'm gonna dispel a myth right now it's never normal even though it happens a lot there's always an underlying disease process and you can rest assured that your cat does not feel good so let's get into the nitty-gritty of what's going on with vomiting and hopefully i can get you some information that will help you so first of all let's talk about a couple of terms and let's talk about uh something that looks very similar to vomiting and cats which is regurgitation regurgitation is a totally different thing that can often really confuse pet parents vomiting is being active right they are forcefully expelling something regurgitation is passive it's just a retrograde movement of undigested food from the esophagus or the stomach back out through the mouth regurgitation usually happens right after eating or fairly soon after eating the food is almost always undigested and there is no active healing it just goes lit you know there is the stuff they often will keep right on eating afterwards too where cats that have vomiting often feel nauseous and don't want to eat so regurge in cats is often due to a condition called mega esophagus which we will not be covering in this video because this video is about vomiting haha but it's important to know the difference so the first thing is knowing whether your cat is vomiting or whether they are regurgitating what is vomiting vomiting is a forceful act it requires the muscles of the diaphragm and the abdomen to contract it's neurologically controlled so it's actually controlled up here and this reflex this vomiting reflex expels the contents of whatever is in the stomach out forcefully through the mouth veterinarians classify vomiting into two broad categories based on the cause we have gi causes so gastrointestinal causes which means it's primarily a gastrointestinal problem with the digestive tract and then there's extra gi causes which means that something outside the gi tract is causing nausea and then that causes the cat to feel sick and vomit then if that was not enough we further classify it into acute vomiting that's vomiting that's been happening for less than five to seven days and then chronic vomiting that's vomiting that's been going on longer than a week or that's vomiting that occurs intermittently once a week twice a week up and on right that's kind of the thing that makes us think that it's normal but it's never normal as an aside acute vomiting usually resolves with just treating the symptoms or it resolves on its own chronic vomiting usually does not so let's talk more in depth about signs of vomiting or signs that may be associated with vomiting and nausea okay obviously vomiting food or undigested food or clear or yellow liquid that can also be bloody it can also be very frothy as well if their stomach is empty they won't usually want to eat because they feel sick but they may drink and they may drink even more than they do normally and then puke all the water right back up sometimes they can have a swollen abdomen or a painful abdomen sometimes they can also have diarrhea oftentimes they can have signs of nausea nausea so just feeling sick and that can include drooling or restless behavior even sometimes open mouth breathing if they feel really really sick if they're vomiting is causing them to have problems with their liver or if liver disease is causing the vomiting they can be jaundiced and jaundice is when their skin turns yellow or the whites of their eyes turn yellow that's due to usually liver disease and cats that have chronic vomiting they can often have weight loss they can often have a very dull lusterless poor hair coat they can often have the signs of dehydration so dry gums or if you pull up their skin it stays tented up like they're dehydrated and in cats that have chronic kidney disease they can also have uremic ulcers and that is those are ulcers in the stomach that are caused by kidney disease and can cause them to either have really bad breath or they can have digested blood in their stool which looks like coffee grounds okay so those are some of the signs that are associated with vomiting and especially chronic vomiting in cats now let's talk about what causes vomiting so let's talk about the causes of acute vomiting first so acute vomiting remember happens all of a sudden and it's been happening for less than five to seven days most common causes in cats include they ate something they shouldn't so they ate either some food that was spoiled or maybe it was too rich for them maybe it was people food or maybe they ate uh some string or hair ties and these can create linear form bodies that can block the stomach and cause vomiting vomiting acutely is also caused by parasites bacterial infections it can be caused by kidney disease pancreatitis is a big cause of vomiting hyperthyroidism when their thyroid levels are too high obstitation obstruction is really really bad constipation and it can block them up so far that they can feel nauseous liver disease addison's which is a disease of the adrenal gland where they don't make enough of certain hormones uncontrolled diabetes can cause cats to vomit inflammatory bowel disease can cause vomiting now we're kind of getting into some of the more causes of chronic vomiting right food intolerance or allergies and the most common allergens in cats are the most common proteins that are used so chicken beef pork soy eggs things like that can cause vomiting if the animal develops a immune response to the food also cancer cancer inside the gastrointestinal tract and outside can both cause vomiting and then there's nervous system problems remember vomiting is controlled in the head so nervous system abnormalities like brain tumors brain trauma encephalitis vestibular disease there are certain drugs that can cause vomiting in cats there's lots of different ones but i'll give you a short list antibiotics so if your cat's been prescribed antibiotics common cause of vomiting especially clavimox clavamox for some reason just makes them puke anti-fungal medication non-steroidal anti-inflammatories like ketoprofen or maloxicam steroids can cause vomiting and obviously chemotherapy can also cause vomiting birth defects if there is any kind of birth defects in the stomach or in the brain or in the esophagus that can all cause vomiting and then lastly stress stress can cause vomiting in cats i'm not going to go into the causes of stress because i definitely do cover that in another video but it could be that your cat's just stressed so as you can see there is a lot of things that can cause vomiting in cats which is why it's such a common problem the thing is is as common as it is it still means that your cat doesn't feel very well and needs some help how do you treat this how do you treat these cats how do you help them feel better remember vomiting itself is not a diagnosis it's just a symptom right you have to see what is causing the vomiting fix that if possible and then also control the nausea that's causing the vomiting so number one address the underlying cause how do you know what the underlying causes well you need to work with a fet and they'll need to probably run some tests on your cat sometimes not sometimes they can figure it out really easily without tests but more times than not they veterinarian needs to use the tools in their toolbox in order to figure out what's going on inside your cat the standard tests for cat vomiting lab work blood work urinalysis fecal tests to look for parasites imaging studies such as x-rays which we call radiographs you call x-rays or abdominal ultrasound those are all kind of the common tests and then what they see on those tests will determine whether they need to run some more like specialized tests looking for specific diseases or if they can just figure it out and help your cat right there number two the treatment includes addressing dehydration most cats that are vomiting are dehydrated and dehydration is hard on the kidneys and all the internal organs so it's really important that your cat gets adequately rehydrated either through intravenous fluids through an iv catheter or through subcutaneous fluids which is just putting fluids under the skin and then obviously we want to stop the vomiting right there's many different ways to do that sometimes if you just address the underlying cause the vomiting goes away on its own sometimes you have to give them a medication that will stop the nausea enough so that they can start to eat and hold things down you may have to withhold food from your cat for a little bit maybe 12 to 24 hours depending on how sick your cat is but never ever do this without the supervision of a veterinarian because it's very important that cats do eat on a regular basis and so only withhold food from your cat if your veterinarian has told you to do so your veterinarian may send you home with some anti-nausea drugs they may also give an injection of anti-nausea drugs they will likely put your cat on a bland food to eat nine times out of ten the gastrointestinal system is all inflamed and it needs to heal and the best way to do that is to feed something that is very easy to digest there's a lot of therapeutic foods out there from the big pet food companies those are great products i've used them for many many years alternatively you can cook a bland food for your cat at home especially if it's just for short term and the way to do that is to just get some plain white rice and some plain chicken breast boil the chicken breast no skin no seasoning no oil and then shred it and put it together 50 50 white chicken meat and rice and that is a bland food sometimes people like to do that instead if your veterinarian thinks that your cat has a ingredient allergy then they may recommend that you put your cat on a diet trial diet trials are where we test the cat with a new food that's either hypoallergenic or novel protein also needs to be novel carbohydrates something they've never eaten before then they put the cat on the diet from anywhere to six to ten weeks it's usually about eight to ten weeks and then we see if the symptoms resolve cats that have gastrointestinal allergies to their food often have a lot of gas they also have oftentimes itchy skin as well and so if there is a true food allergy all of those signs will resolve it's very important if this happens that you only feed the food that your veterinarian told you to give if you feed anything else then we're putting different stuff in the cat's system and we don't know if it's going to work or not does that make sense other treatments that could be prescribed include deworming or antibiotics as needed also in addition there's also the treatments for the underlying causes whatever that may be for some cats they do require surgery cats that have eaten something that they shouldn't that has become stuck and needs to be removed that's a surgical case and then if your cat is vomiting because of stress then you are going to need to do some home modification of the environment and work with your veterinarian on calming aids or perhaps prescription strength stress medication it's very very important to work with a veterinarian if your cat's vomiting like once a month once a week twice a week twice a month and it's pretty regular there's something that can be modified to help that stop i hope that all of this information has been helpful and that you are able to know a little bit more of what is causing vomiting and what can potentially be prescribed for treatment and how to help your cat at home okay so if this has been helpful let me know leave me a comment in the comment section also i am doing a whole series of videos so if you like this information and would like to learn more about how to help your cat please subscribe to these videos share them with your friends and give me suggestions for other things you would like me to cover thank you so much for watching i will be back very soon with another video you

Channel: Cats

Views: 542,275

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Id: MVndPT9seFE

Length: 15min 44sec (944 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 14 2022