Some cats swallow dry cat food pellets whole rather than chew them sufficiently. This is my experience. Certainly my cat does this. When he first ate some dry cat food he threw the whole lot up about ten minutes later. Now when he eats it, he still tends to swallow the pellets whole – like hoovering it up – but is no longer sick. That worries me slightly.
My theory is that when a cat hoovers up dry cat food pellets they irritate the stomach and are immediately thrown up.
Above is a picture provided by a friend whose cat eats dry cat food in the “hoovering” fashion. You can see the vomited up pellets are more of less still whole. She kindly placed some original pellets next to the sick for comparison. The ham in the picture was used to try and get her cat to take a pill. In my view that is not relevant to this discussion.
I have not seen much discussion on the internet about this subject. I have a feeling it is not uncommon for cats to suck up rather than masticate dry cat food pellets. They are small enough. I don’t think cat food manufacturers foresaw this problem. It is a problem because:
- Chewing food is part of the digestion process. It prepares food for digestion in the stomach and
- It is claimed that dry cat food cleans teeth. Not chewing it avoids this potential benefit.
- There may be unforeseen health problems in the digestive tract. I don’t know enough to comment on that but swallowing pellets in large quantities can’t be good for the stomach and intestine if the cat does not throw them up.
I think too that there may be a dust element. What I mean is that there are always a certain amount of small particles of dry cat food in the bag. I refer to these as dust. They get hoovered up too and irritate the stomach. There would seem to be a danger of these particles getting into the lungs.
Have you had similar experiences? Incidentally, I don’t believe in dry cat food but leave some out for my cat at night for grazing.
Hi Pieter, thanks for visiting and sharing. On the basis that your cat is well and not ill then as you say she vomited up the dry food pellets because they irritated her stomach due to not being masticated by teeth and saliva.
I’d stick to high quality we food and semi-moist foods.
My cat seems to trow up these things. I think it’s indeed related to the dry food as she’s still young and I recently switched over from kitten food to dry normal catfood. It’s just food that is undigested.
Bigger pellets don’t help. I’ve tried all sizes with Monty. He still scarfs and barfs.
Good point. I think the biscuits should be bigger but dry cat food is basically unnatural so whatever the size it is a fail. Cats have difficulty dealing with it.