The trouble with cats’ cleanliness obsession
You are woken in the middle of the night by a horrible persistent wretching sound. In your mad panic you stub your toe on the bed leg as you stumble to find the offending cat to grab them and lift them outside or on to the lino. But alas, you don’t quite make it and with neck and tongue outstretched your furry feline deposits with projectile force a long fluidcovered sausage at your feet on the bedroom carpet or worse, the duvet.
It looks like something that should come out the other end. ‘‘The Russian’’ in the movie Cats & Dogs does a great impression!
In the middle of the night it’s hard to determine what it is but almost certainly it will be a furball or trichobezoar (someone was having a laugh when they came up with that name!) So what is a furball? When they groom themselves cats ingest a lot of hair along with all sorts of other bits from the garden and the odd flea, if we haven’t used a good flea product! (NB: Spring is a busy time of the year for fleas – warm and humid – so I’d recommend you grab some flea product now).
The hair clumps together and gradually builds up as the stomach contents slosh around. If the clump gets to a certain size it won’t be able to leave the stomach through the outlet leading towards the blunt end. So it sits in there just gradually getting bigger.
Cats and especially long-haired cats groom themselves for about two to three hours a day. It’s a sign of a healthy cat. As kittens, the mother grooms them until they are 4 weeks of age after which they begin to groom each other and by 6 to 8 weeks they should be grooming themselves.
Cats are amazing little guys. Check out their tongue! It has hundreds of backward-pointing spikes designed to lap liquid and also rake through their coat and pull loose hair out along with any dirt. It is difficult to move hair forwards past these spikes and therefore anything is generally swallowed.
Grooming also has the function of keeping them cool as the saliva deposited on the fur evaporates. Cats don’t have many sweat glands other than in areas like their feet – hence the term – ‘‘sweaty paws’’.
People sometimes think that their friend has had a little accident in the carry cage when they come to see me but they have often just been sweating through their paws. (Some do get caught short, though!)
We have had to help a few larger and a few elderly furry friends lately that have come in with a small carpet attached to their lower back. These large clumps of matted fur build up because they are unable to reach that area. A quick No 1 blade and problem solved for a while.
Others get more extensively matted and need a ‘lion clip’’, as we call it. In other words, a complete shave off, leaving only the paws, tail and head.
Sometimes it is impossible to avoid, because some cats will rip you to shreds rather than have a comb anywhere near them but others maybe just need a bit of regular maintenance every day at home to stop the problem getting out of control. So back to hairballs. Eventually the hairball in the stomach causes enough irritation to stimulate them to vomit but the size of the fur ball often requires a fair bit of expulsion – especially at 2am.
Hairballs can also cause problems further down and if they pass in to the intestines and are a reasonable size, they can cause an obstruction. These are difficult as they don’t show up on a plain X-ray film. So what about prevention? Mild laxative products for long-haired cats. These are flavoured paraffin or oilbased pastes applied to their food or paws (messy) every few days.Regular grooming with a good comb or cat hair rake (if they will let you).Specially formulated foods that contain oils.Wretching to bring up a furball can be easily confused with a cough due to a respiratory disease so if in doubt at all, get us to check your friend out.
Other patients that are particularly prone to hairballs are those cats with itchy skin conditions who over-groom themselves. Correction of the itch will solve the hairball problem. Give us a call if you need some help.
Anderson’s Veterinary Hospitals in Palmerston North, phone 357 9993 for Pitama Rd or 356 9993 for Hokowhitu, open till 7pm Monday to Friday and open Saturday and Sunday.