arguchik | grrrrrrrrrr! (warning: very high gross factor!)

got home after a loooong day today, and there was a small spot of cat puke on the floor. lovely! so i cleaned it up and looked around...jester always pukes twice...where's the other one?

i didn't find it.

a little while later, i went to sit on my bed. oh, here it is. in the exact middle of the bed. a big hairball with all kinds of other good stuff. it has soaked through the comforter cover, through the down comforter, and out the other side--a spot about 10 inches in diameter. great. i have to wash the comforter cover. fortunately it didn't soak all the way through to the sheets. last time this happened (3 times in a single week, about a year and a half ago), i had the down comforter professionally cleaned. this time i'm washing it in the washer...hopefully it will come out OK. wish me luck. and wish the cat luck if he pulls this again tomorrow!

but what can i do about the hairballs??? i have tried everything. i use a hairball-reducing dry food that came highly recommended by the mud bay granary staff. i give him half a can of wet food per day (also an all natural mud bay recommendation). i have been brushing him 2-4 times per week since mid-august. and still with the hairballs--he pukes a minimum of 3 times per week, and for awhile last summer it was literally every single day.

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speaking of the beast, have you been able to get those spots looked at you mentioned earlier?

I feel sorry for him cause i know he feels crappy but he's such a monster.

i tried to get to the vet last week, but they didn't have an opening when i did. we're going this week instead. i'll post any info/results/developments.

he doesn't *seem* to feel crappy. maybe he does, though. cats are cagey that way so it's hard to tell. he sleeps a lot--more than he ever used to. but other than that, the puking, and having trouble jumping up on stuff, he seems like his usual self.

p.s. washing the down comforter in the machine in my building didn't work. after the washer was done, i took the comforter out, and the stains were still there--plus some spots on the comforter were still dry! so...it's off to the landromat with me... fortunately we're having a free laundry special in my building this month, so i'm not out any quarters. not looking forward to trudging 5 blocks with a big wet thing in my arms...

Vaseline. get a jar of the straight up vaseline grease (ew, I know.) and about once a week or so, take a finger full and wipe it on the cat's upper palate, just behind the front teeth. He can do nothing at this point but lick it all off. Depending on the cat, you can generally avoid getting bitten by wrestling him into a football hold, then using your thumb and forefinger of your left hand, press on the corners of his mouth - you can slide your finger and thumb between his back teeth long enough to shove in some vaseline with the little finger on your right hand. He'll make a face and hate you, but he'll eventually lick it all off. If you were feeling particularly generous, you could mix it with a little of the sauce from his wet food first. Or, alternate with peanut butter or some similarly sticky substance that he likes. He might tolerate the vaseline better if he thinks he might be getting something yummy. My stepmom used to do this with a hairball-prone cat of ours, and it worked miracles. And, at least it wasn't a puddle of piss.
Oh yeah, tell the vet about the puking. They may have some more tricks for you, and cats generally don't puke that much unless there's something else going on. Or they truly hate you.
Good luck, and my sympathies. Cats can be wonderful, and they can be spiteful and (seemingly) purposefully nasty.

i have pumped this cat *full* of greasy hairball remedies over the years (never tried straight vaseline though)--and yes, i have had to force feed such remedies since he was about 5 or 6 and developed an aversion to them (doesn't matter the brand or the flavor). for awhile, just getting petromalt near his nose would trigger his gag reflex. he has gotten particularly prone to hairballs in his old age (he's almost 15 now). i was giving him a non-petroleum remedy recommended by the mud bay staffers *every single day* for awhile (they told me to add it to his wet food every day), and still he puked 3-4 days out of 7.

*and* i have talked to every vet i've ever been to with this cat about the puking. they all say the same thing: it's hairballs. give him petromalt and brush him regularly. but this cat is *always* cleaning himself--he almost never stops, and lately he has been obsessively licking the spot where i found those tumors. (not to the point of baldness yet, just a *lot*.) no matter how much i brush him, he still ingests an awful lot of hair. perhaps this is related to the tumors in some other way, i don't know (a partial bowel obstruction, perhaps?).

i'm getting really tired of the situation, though, and i'm really...about done. i can't take much more.

honestly, if it had been a puddle of piss...and it *wasn't* due to a urinary tract infection...the cat would be ash by now. i have *no* tolerance for elimination outside of the litter box, mainly because once a cat starts to do it, except in the case of illness (and sometimes even then), it's amost impossible to train it out of him/her without the cat causing extensive damage to your home in the process. cat piss is a bitch to clean up. as a renter and a graduate student, there's just no way i can afford that.

Ugh, yuck. I would be really sick of it too. Cleaning up cat puke all the time would suck. At least he's box trained... Crazy old cat! I've never used petromalt - sounds like flavored vaseline, though. Sometimes I miss having cats... and then I don't.

hmm. i'm wondering who "i" is, in the above comment...

petromalt is about half vaseline (petrolatum). it's a dark brown color, because the other half is made up of malt syrup, with a couple of other things thrown in like glycerin, chicken or fish flavoring, and vitamins of some sort. heh. i wonder if the price of oil is driving up the price of petromalt?

grrrrrrrrrr! (warning: very high gross factor!)

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