Hairball problem?

"Laura R." wrote
circa Sat, 05 Jul 2003 16:34:53 GMT, in rec.pets.cats.health+behav,
Caliban ) said,
Hi Cathy,

As it happens, my cat's first tube of hairball remedy was the molasses
(I
think) flavored Petromalt. His second tube is Hartz's salmon flavored
one.
My cat is not keen on either, but it's not a big problem. At least the
drops
he shakes off his paw clean up easily from the carpet.

Try plain ol' vaseline. You could even try mixing it into his food.

I am holding off on vaseline for now, because these "hairball remedies" have
additional nutrients. E.g. the Hartz hairball remedy has Vitamin B1.

And, yes, I want to get my cat down to less and less each week but think it
might come down to some regular amount, say a half-inch ribbon each week or
every other week, to help his digestion.

snip
I will have to check the labels of
the various cat foods and treats designed to prevent hair balls and see
if
they work mostly by adding oil to the diet.

They don't. Some use petrolatum (petroleum jelly)

Petrolatum is oil.

and others use
vegetable fiber. Just because a substance is slippery doesn't mean
it's suitable to treat hairballs.

I don't know that most oils that are consumable (vegetable, olive,
margarine, butter) wouldn't all have the same effect for short-term
treatment of hairballs.

I will study more on the fiber, however. One of the sites you listed said
its cat food had 4% fiber for the treatment of hairballs. I'll check other
dry foods and see if they're much different. Remember, the original poster
said s/he gave her cat hairball treats. Now maybe the recent vomiting wasn't
hairballs, but if it was, this seems to me to confound what the best remedy
(short or long-term) is.

The single best thing you can do to help prevent hairballs is groom
the cat regularly. The less hair the cat swallows, the less hair
there is to cause irritation in his/her digestive tract.
Supplementing with vegetable-fiber foods, with petrolatum or with
fiber supplements is good, but simply adding fat (butter, oil) to a
cat's diet does just that- adds fat.

Why is it you think butter is worse fat-wise than petrolatum?

Cat diets are already pretty
high-fat in comparison to what would be best for humans.

In fact, since you mentioned that your cat ate mostly Iams, check out
the little interactive demo he

http://tinyurl.com/g3t5

Note that what Iams uses for hairball control is cellulose and beet
pulp fiber. Fatty acids (fish oils) are used to add shine to the
coat.

Years ago when I got my cat (as a six-week-old kitten), his veterinarian
emphatically stated Iams and Hill's Science was far superior to any other
cat foods. I noticed her office sold the stuff. I also know many people
swear by Iams, but not, it seems, based on any particular scientific
results. It seems it just became popular. That is, people like to appear to
"know best." In fact, I'm not sure the studies attesting to Iams superiority
are all that credible. Marketers (read: greedy executives lied) may have got
the better of the public for some time.

Now I see Iams debated regularly here. It's lost its edge, apparently. I fed
my cat strictly dry Iams for years and am now convinced this was a huge
contributor to his recent troubles.

So whom to believe? Several of the sites you provided are cat food
manufacturer-sponsored. And I don't know what the other sites are using for
their sources.

At any rate, as I said, I will look into the high fiber alternatives for
dealing with hairballs and continue brushing down my cat once a day,
something I had not done before. (But nor did I ever have a hairball
situation with a cat like this before, given my several cats in my life
since I was a kid, none of whom were brushed regularly and all of whom lived
healthily for years. So there's still some puzzlement here.)

Thanks for your comments.