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This is a five year old Maine Coon that eats (gorges, actually) then hunkers down and starts hacking a dozen or so times then vomits. This is usually within 5 minutes of finishing her meals, although I've seen her go as long as ten minutes. The odd thing is that she isn't loosing weight.

* She is, of course, a long hair, but is brushed daily.

* I've tried limiting her meals to very small amounts of food, rationing it over the course of the day. This prevents the gorging, but not always the vomiting.

* Use the Purina Hairball formula dry cat food. Her vet gave her this expensive version of the same thing which didn't work any better than the Purina. This is about all I can feed her, moist meaty meals come up much faster and messier and put down permanent stains on my carpet.

* Use Haartz hairball remedy daily, which seems to help some, although she would like to take issue with the company concerning the alleged salmon flavoring.

* I grow grass indoors for her, which also seems to help at times, but not always.

My concerns for her long term health is that the frequent vomiting will cause cardiac problems and erode her teeth and upper digestive tract. I'm at my wits end with this, as I don't know how to help her and I cannot afford to keep paying for expensive test. I've already run through a battery of tests which indicate she is perfectly healthy. I'm also tired of cleaning up vomit from a champagne colored carpet.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

This may be due to either a food allergy or to IBS. Or just the fact that she gorges so quickly.

If you can get a second opinion sometime, it might help - perhaps you can save a some money and then go to another doctor who might run different tests.
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Smile, it will make them wonder what you are up to!

Thank you, I'll try your advice and see how that works.

I do know it isn't an allergy, because it doesn't matter what food she eats.

I have a 2 yr old calico. She does pretty much the same thing and i know its not an allergy. it happens maybe 2-3 times a week, as soon as she is done eating she walks over to the carpet and coughs it up. sounds like a hair ball but isnt. She was a stray when i adopted her, and i know they had her on canned food, so i weaned her off of that slowly and put her on dry food. it doesnt seem to matter if its ewt or dry food she still coughs it up. Im not sure what to do.

For the Maine Coon that gulps -- one trick to try is to put some large, clean smooth river stones into the food dish. Not huge but large enough so the cat can't swallow them and so they have a little weight. The cat then is forced to slow down and not gulp food because it has to work around the stones and move them to get at the food. Maybe 2-3 inch circumference stones -- not so large that they're hard to move.

The other idea if the cat eats dry is to use a cat treat ball. Then the cat has to work to get its meal and it comes in small bits.

I have friends with a gulper who tried the first trick and said it really helped. It may take a little while for the cat to figure out that there's food in them thar stones, but food enthusiasts tend to find it pretty fast! Both these tricks also work with dogs who are gulpers.

I know this thread was last-used a few months ago, but I just had to find it to respond to the river rock recommendation. I have a cat who kept vomiting, too, and I tried this technique and it has TOTALLY worked! There are 2 river rocks in our two larger dishes and 1 river rock in our smaller dish and she has not thrown up since then. Must pass this idea on to others!!

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