Your cat is sick after eating commercially manufactured cat food. There are two ways to interpret the word “sick”. It might mean that your cat is vomiting or it might mean that your cat is vomiting AND looks unwell for a while because of other behaviours.
1. Poisoned?
It’s going to come down to your knowledge of your cat through years of observation and a close relationship as to whether you choose the former or the latter.
However, it should be recognised that domestic cats are very good at vomiting and often times they vomit because the food they’ve eaten is rotten and they are fine immediately after vomiting it up.
2. Veterinary treatment
But if they look unwell for a while after eating cat food and after vomiting it up, it’s going to require an emergency vet visit in my view. The indications are that the cat has been poisoned.
This would be rare for commercially prepared cat food because by and large the standards in terms of basic health care are very high. The debate about cat food is whether the quality is high but that is another matter.
The infographic might help:
3. Reporting
The next issue is more about serving the community. It is an altruistic behaviour and it concerns keeping the pet food that you gave your cat that made him sick. The purpose here is to have it checked out by the authorities to protect a wider community of domestic cats being fed the same brand and specific food. This can lead to a pet food recall. They are not that uncommon. And some are very serious.
In America, if your cat did require veterinary care, you can ask your veterinarian to report the matter to the FDA if they agree with you that the food has poisoned your cat. They have an online reporting page – click here. My thanks to Susan Thixton.
In the UK, I’m sure your veterinarian will be able to assist on who to contact. It should be the Food Standards Agency (FSA) through their online incident report form. Defra would also be interested I believe which stands for the Department for Environmental, Food and Rural Affairs.
Other countries should have a similar procedure.
Cat still died months after they stopped eating mycotoxin contaminated recalled cat food
