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ProfessorTomoe

Loudmouth's Journey Inside

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I didn't have to hunt. Loudmouth made it very clear where he'd barfed up dinner. Sigh. I don't know if there was a hairball in it or not. All I do know is that it wasn't the pure liquid that we've had over the past few days. It was also disturbingly close to my old stash of VCR tapes. :o

@CritterKeeper, I could really use suggestions for hairball control food, both dry and wet. Please!

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1 hour ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

Loudmouth ate dinner. It seems to have stayed down. I'm not going to go hunting through the house at 1:45 in the morning for cat barf, anyway.

I've told Mrs. Prof that we need to invest in a hairball-reducing food for Loudmouth, since he sheds everywhere. @CritterKeeper, can you provide some suggestions? I don't think EVO makes an anti-hairball formula.

 

14 minutes ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

I didn't have to hunt. Loudmouth made it very clear where he'd barfed up dinner. Sigh. I don't know if there was a hairball in it or not. All I do know is that it wasn't the pure liquid that we've had over the past few days. It was also disturbingly close to my old stash of VCR tapes. :o

@CritterKeeper, I could really use suggestions for hairball control food, both dry and wet. Please!

Sorry, didn't see this between your two posts.  I usually recommend using Laxaire (the brand of hairball paste we carry) or Vaseline if they don't like the flavor, three times twelve hours apart -- that is, give it this morning, tonight, and tomorrow morning.  Then go back to the labeled schedule.  As for food, I tend to like the companies that put money into developing foods that help sick pets, and are the most open about what's in their diets and the full nutritional information on them.  Purina, Hill's, Iams, and Royal Canin.  All of them have some sort of Hairball formula.  My boys were on Science Diet Hairball Light for a while, before ending up on prescription diets.

Did the vet do any bloodwork or x-rays, or was it more along the lines of, "This might very well be it, and it's cheap and easy to try treating for it and see if it works!  Come back if the signs don't clear up."?

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2 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

Did the vet do any bloodwork or x-rays, or was it more along the lines of, "This might very well be it, and it's cheap and easy to try treating for it and see if it works!  Come back if the signs don't clear up."?

Pretty much the latter. She palpated his gut for a blockage, since we'd been getting barfs of fully digested food. No blockage response, so she went with the hairball/call in a week diagnosis.

I caught Loudmouth poaching Baker's dry food a few minutes ago, so he's got to be getting hungry enough to risk dry food. I checked out the Science Diet Hairball Light on Chewy.com earlier—I think I'm going to make the hard sell of that to Mrs. Prof when she gets up. Thanks for the reinforcement.

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Mrs. Prof fed Loudmouth a double serving of wet food this morning. He practically drained it dry, in between poaching attempts from Baker. Loudmouth then went over to Baker's tray and tried to eat some of his dry food. I stopped that an gave Loudmouth the last of the wet food from the opened can. Another poaching attempt by Baker led to him being locked in the master bedroom again. I'll be glad when it doesn't matter who eats what.

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Mrs. Prof took a couple of pictures of Baker while I was out like a light last night. First is a picture of him relaxing as well:

large.Baker_20170912_01a.jpg

The other is of him taking advantage of the cubby hole stairs we bought for the cats. Loudmouth prefers the bottom two cubicles, but Baker likes the top one and to be on top of the stack:

large.Baker_20170912_02a.jpg

Those ears on him look like they could echo locate. :D

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It's been almost 24 hours since Loudmouth's last barf. The vet's got him on Vetoquinol care Laxatone, 1.5cc 2x daily for a week. Mrs. Prof says he doesn't give her a hard time when it comes to administering. Bonus.

Loudmouth was very quiet today, since Mrs. Prof was working from home. I was passed out from hydrocodone for most of the day as well, so if he was up and around, I missed it.

@CritterKeeper, I think I've talked Mrs. Prof into getting some Hill's Science Diet Adult Hairball Control Light Dry Cat Food from the local Pet Supplies Plus store. We'll see if she actually goes by and gets it.

I assume it's safe to feed that to both cats, even if Baker has never had a single hairball problem?

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Should be safe, yes, it's a complete and balanced diet.

There are a lot of people who lean towards low carb diets for cats these days, so in theory it might be better to only feed the high fiber diet to the cat who needs it, but if Loudmouth does better on it, the practicalities of feeding them separately can be a bigger factor.  If Loudmouth does better on higher fiber, you can always work on shifting the diet to see if something in between the two will do the job.  If nothing else, the canned version of a given diet is usually lower carb than the dry version, so introducing a higher fiber canned and gradually switching to that might be an option.  Ultimately, what works to keep him healthy now is more important than the theoretical benefits of lower carbs over the long run.

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Mrs. Prof stopped and purchased a bag of the Science Diet Hairball Light food. She then called me with a warning: none of the cats at the pet adoption center like it. Something about it being too big or too hard or both—I can't remember. I hope Loudmouth is the exception to the rule.

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Well, Loudmouth slurped up the gravy from his wet food and then ate about half of the dry anti-Hairball food—his first dry food in days. This was about three hours ago, and we haven't had a barf fest yet. All fingers crossed that we don't hear his "urp urp urp" sound overnight.

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No urpage! Loudmouth seems to have finished off the Science Diet overnight. He ate more of it than the meat from the wet food. I'm surprised. No barfs to be found anywhere in the house. He's still got a few more days of lubricant gel to take, but I think we may have crossed a very important threshold here.

I don't know if we're going to continue feeding Baker the EVO or not. Knowing Mrs. Prof's penchant for simplification, probably not, unless he absolutely won't eat the Science Diet.

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Mrs. Prof drives me crazy at times. She's doing the "weaning" bit on Baker to get him onto the Science Diet. Problem is, she's backed up and is "weaning" Loudmouth, too. He hadn't had any solid food for about a week, so his first solid was the Science Diet. I see no reason for doing the weaning on him. But, I'm not doing the feeding, so I don't have control over who gets fed what.

So frustrating.

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Loudmouth and Baker are back to chasing each other through the back of the house early in the morning. Baker then takes his midday siesta, after which (i.e., after Mrs. Prof comes home) he becomes a pill again until he gets his nighttime petting and loving session. I can not take Mrs. Prof's place on this—he'll only let Mrs. Prof do the petting session.

Here's Baker thoroughly worn out for the day, on The Petting Pillow Throne:

large.Baker_20170917_01a.jpg

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No picture, but Loudmouth appears to be back to his happy, healthy self. He doesn't stay as close to me as he did when he was sick—I guess he knew he needed human help. Now, he knows he doesn't need it as much except for feeding and the occasional pet and play session. The lube goop must have done its job on the hairball.

However, we're having some rejection problems with the Hill's Science Diet Hairball Light food. The lumps are too big or something. Mrs. Prof. says the cats at the pet adoption shelter won't eat it, either. @CritterKeeper, what were the other brands you'd recommended?

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You can try the canned, or you can try something else Hill's, Purina, Royal Canin, or Iams.  Those are the companies that are the most open with their foods' complete nutritional info, and the ones that put money back into researching what to feed sick pets to help them get better or live longer.  Hill's invented the first kidney diet, for a seeing eye dog named Buddy; Purina did the research that got Mary the diabetic diet that's had her in remission for years.  Any hairball diet from them, I'd be confident thay know what they're doing and the diet will be nutritionally complete.

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Well, I don't know if this was the best choice, but we bought Chicken Soup for the Soul Hairball Control cat food. Mrs. Prof went by her experience at the pet adoption shelter with this. She said the cats will eat it, which is an important stage—if you can't get it inside them, it does no good. We couldn't get the Hill's inside our cats, hence the switch. We'll see how it goes.

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In other news, Loudmouth showed up in an unexpected place today. Baker has a set of boxes that he uses as a castle. He likes to climb up on them and get behind Mrs. Prof when she's working in the morning. She'll turn around and give him his "spa time" as she calls it, petting him, brushing him, and letting him crawl into her lap for more brushing.

This morning, she heard someone crawl up on the castle. She turned around and found a stranger staring back at her:

large.Loudmouth_20170918_Box_01a.jpg

How can you refuse those eyes and those whiskers? :tongue:

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Loudmouth jumped up onto the castle again today. He got a good brushing from Mrs. Prof and then went back to the master bedroom. I followed him and gave him a brief petting session. Shortly after that, Baker assumed his rightful position as King of the Castle and got his own good brushing. At least there's been no late morning strife, although I'm told that Mrs. Prof had to deal with some around 6:00 a.m. this morning.

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I'm the one up at 6am today. No cat carnage at the moment. I think Mrs. Prof wore them out late last night, since she was up until almost midnight playing with both of them with the laser.

... and, as I type this, Loudmouth comes skidding into the living room, followed by Baker in full chase. Sigh. Had to intervene and pet Loudmouth on his spot on the smaller tree. It's the end of the first quarter at the moment.

Last night, we'd decided to try something else in the hairball food, since they hadn't really eaten the Chicken Soup for the Soul food. I got on Chewy.com and ordered a couple of 3.5 pound bags of Purina Pro Plan Focus. One was Adult Hairball Management Chicken & Rice Formula Dry Cat Food. The other was Adult Indoor Care Salmon & Rice Formula Dry Cat Food, since they seem to like fish formula wet food.

Just our luck, I wake up this morning and find that both cats have eaten from the Chicken Soup for the Soul Hairball Formula. Sigh. At least they were only 3.5 pound bags. We may still try them, especially the indoor salmon formula one.

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20 minutes ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

Just our luck, I wake up this morning and find that both cats have eaten from the Chicken Soup for the Soul Hairball Formula. Sigh.

Well DUH.

Baker: "Dude! They finally ordered the two bags of Purina we wanted!"
Loudmouth: "Awesome, I thought they'd never fall for it! Let's hit the bowl, I'm frigging starving."

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Loudmouth has retreated to his cubicle—the lowest one on the cubicle tree—while Baker is going hyperactive again. Baker's not trying to involve Loudmouth: he's just jumping and running all over the place. Seems like he had a two coffee cup morning as well.

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1 hour ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

The 6:00 storm started about 15 minutes early this morning. :darn_it_alll:

I feel your pain. I have less than fond memories of being woken up by a catfight starting beneath the quilt right next to me. :icon_eek:

(My two Burmese kitties were brother and sister from the same litter and they regularly got into wrestling matches with one another. They were never really all that serious, mind. My wife and I called them 'kitfights' rather than 'catfights.')

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Yes, Baker and Loudmouth swung paws at each other on top of the bed this morning while Mrs. Prof was availing herself of the facilities. I couldn't tell if claws were extended. It was a silent tussle, though, and brief. I broke it up after it started.

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