Reacting fast to the hork-hork feline vomity noise
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.