Your cat is on your bed. You are snoozing contentedly, drifting away to better places, in and out of consciousness. Suddenly you hear that dreaded feline hork-hork sound that means one thing; your darling cat is warming up for a vomit. It is the prelude to the classic cat sick session.
What do you do? Do you leap into action? I wake up very sharply, grab him firmly but gently, pick him up and place him on the wooden floor. All the while he hork-horks. You have about 4 seconds before he produces the stuff.
In the nick of time I have him in a safe place and he sicks up there and then. My job is done for a while. I know it’s alright because the floor can take cat sick without any staining. It can be cleaned up in seconds with kitchen paper.
I lie back and start to drift off again. I smell that special aroma that is cat sick. I get up, grab some kitchen paper and mop it up. It is still warm.
In the meantime Charlie has hopped (he has three legs) to the kitchen for some more grub.
Then I go back to sleep. I feel him jump on the bed about 5-10 minutes later. He washes himself and after about 10 minutes he settles down and falls asleep. I follow.
The question is: do you bother to move your cat to a safe place which is feline vomit resistant and easy clean the moment you hear him starting to be sick? Or perhaps you don’t have a floor that is tiled or wooden close by.
Perhaps every cat caretaker should have a house with wood floors. If Charlie had been sick on the bedspread it would have meant a dry cleaning bill. No big deal. Just a hassle.
Cats are very good at being sick. Most of the time it is probably caused by hairballs. It certainly is for Charlie. He is an avid groomer and swallows a lot of fur. Sometimes he has a loud coughing fit to get rid of it from his windpipe. It is all part of the process.
One off vomiting is fine. Anything persistent means a check up by a vet.
heya my cat cassy did this alot i often wander if it was a beginning of her getting really sick. i just usually clean it up afterwards. SO far the other boys havent had any of this laterly. Though rebel eats too quickly as im sure the first place he was at he didnt get much food. as i rescued him from a cat horder. who had over 22 cats.
Some cats are very prone to hairballs, no matter what you do they still manage to make them, our Jozef does and we have to accept that they are better up than blocking his insides.
Michael, somehow I missed that earlier article, on one of MY favorite topics. 😉 My favorite expression is, you guessed it, hurl! (Also,an old DOS PC game that was loads of fun.)
I heard the music of Jo bringing up a hairball during the night a few nights back but couldn’t find it anywhere…until yesterday when I stood in it, it was balanced on the very edge of my bedside rug disguised in the pattern lol and very cold and mushy by then.
There is no feeling like hobbling to the bathroom with a hairball plastered on the bottom of your foot lol
Oh no sorry but the image of you is just too funny!
Oh, no! You too!
Getting out of bed half asleep (do you remember when you didn’t wake up to pee?) and stepping on something cold and wet sure is a wake up. And, if it smells, sleep time is over.
Once I’m out of bed the day has begun lol Walt and Jo won’t let me get back in.
I don’t think I’ve peed myself for over 60 years now lol but you reminded me of this little rhyme:
‘When I was young and in my prime
I peed my britches many a time,
But now I’m old and going grey
I only pee them once a day’
lol lol lol
You’ve all made me laugh so much with all your especially descriptive stories about yakking up and hairballs 🙂 I had to wash twice in quick succession after my beautiful ozzie yakked up on the quilt cover, quilt, sheet and mattress protector!!! who’d have thought it would go right through!!!
That must have been an exceptional load from Ozzie lol he should have the title ‘Cat vomiter of the year’
Every now and then we have a cat throw up. Especially our “Italian” cats who delight in gorging on food, then throwing up and then going back to eat more food. The kitchen table or the kitchen floor is like an Italian vomitorium.
Our problem is Oozy, who has been with us since the end of August. He LOVE to run over to the throw up and get it! So instead of cleaning up the mess, we have to grab OOzy and get him into a feeding case so he won’t eat pre-digested cat food.
Some cats are just gross in what they’ll do. Look at that little face. He’s actually smirking like he KNOWS how cute he is.
Wow, another Smiling Cat. and he looks so contemplative. What an ethereal, neat photo. He looks so innocent. 😉
He’s a toe biter. He has to sleep with me because he spends most of the night attacking her feet. I guess old toes aren’t as tasty as young toes because he rarely attacks mine. He’s also kept busy attacking my nebulizer as I take my breathing treatments.
Then he really is smirking, lol, naughty kitty!