My cat throws up daily. Is it hairballs or a foreign object?

I can't tell from the photos but hair balls will have a lot of hair in them. If these are hairballs, you may try changing Mochi's diet to a food formulated to control hairballs. I think Royal Canin makes a very good product. I hope this helps and please feel free to post any additional questions.

I am sorry we didn't answer your question sooner. Hopefully you have heard from your vet by now. The tissue in the picture is actually a couple of hairballs. I would recommend talking to your vet about what may be the best option for preventing additional hairballs (medications, dietary change, shaving the hair, etc).

It's probably something more serious. chronic vomiting can be caused by various conditions (foreign body, pancreatitis, lymphoma, IBD and more...), you will need to take her to the vet in order to get checked and have a blood test done as a first step to try and find out what is causing this.

Hi there and thank you for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach to address your concern. It is possible that this is a hairball issue, so placing Beans on a hairball supplement or changing the diet to a hairball formulation may help. If this continues to happen, then I would recommend an abdominal ultrasound to see if there is any indication of what may be causing the nausea / vomiting.

Thank you for submitting your question regarding Lilly. A longhaired cat should only produce 3-4 hairballs per year. Any more than that is considered abnormal. If her initial blood panel came back normal, I typically recommend a secondary panel that checks for pancreatitis, a disease known as pancreatic exocrine insufficiency as well as cobalamin and folate levels. This can reveal the cause of the vomiting or give some treatment options for her. Inflammatory bowel disease is common cause of chronic vomiting. This will typically result in a low cobalamin levels. It can not be diagnosed without intestinal biopsies, but those are very invasive. An abdominal ultrasound can give a lot of information and rule out other causes of vomiting. If I suspect this to be the case, I will treat the patient with a prescription hydrolyzed diet to help decrease inflammation and sometimes medication as well. I hope this information helps!

Thanks for the images. It doesn't appear to be blood. Blood in vomitus is usually much darker. That appears to be a mix of chewed or partially digested food, bile and hair. Monitor for continued vomiting, lethargy or loss of appetite. These are symptoms that should be addressed by your veterinarian. Consider a short fast, maybe 12 hours, then offer a bland diet in small, frequent amounts for a day or two. Transition slowly to the regular diet afterwards. If Luna will allow, increase brushing or grooming to decrease the amount of hair ingested. You can also use Laxatone or PetroMalt paste to help her pass hairballs.Find either in the local Petco.

Yes you always have to be worried with potential foreign body ingestions. Hair ties are pretty small so the chance that they can cause blockages are slim, but they can still get stuck in the intestines and cause problems There are two possibilities at this point: 1) There is another hair tie still in there ( this will take some deductive reasoning in your part) that is stuck. 2) All hair ties have been expelled and your pet now just has an upset stomach due to dietary indiscretion. The odds are good because it is very small and had no sharp edges. With small foreign bodies it is recommended feed the pet a bulking agent like 1/2-1 loaf of bread or canned food that will help bind any additional objects within the GI tract and potentially help expel them out of the system. Good luck with your kitty and I hope that things will progress uneventful in the next couple of days. - Dr.H