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Cat Hairballs - Danger Ahead

Cats and hairballs go together. Cat hairballs are hair that was not digested, accumulated and coughed out. Cats will either pass hair through their digestive system or the hair will build up in their bodies causing the retching and heaving required to get rid of it. Cats follow rich grooming practices. They lick their body most vigorously capturing any loose, dead fur. Their rough tongue makes it hard on them to spit out any offending fur. Most often hair passes through their digesting system and disposed naturally. When hair accumulates inside their tummy, blocking paths in their digestive system, vomiting or coughing hairballs happen.

Cats having long fur a lot of times develop more hairballs than other cats. If a cat is not able to rid itself of cat hairballs through vomiting or through the digestive system, it could suffer from a blockage in the intestine or stomach. Left untreated for too long, it can be life-threatening. Without surgery, that blockage caused by a hairball could be deadly.

Although cats and hairballs are a common sight, one must pay attention in order to avoid complications.
Hairballs, while hard to avoid, are fairly easy to deal with. Brushing your cat and helping with its grooming lowers the chance of it swallowing a lot of hair. Brush strokes help get rid of a lot of that dead, loose hair. The diet of your cat could be helpful in eliminating hairballs from its system. Some manufacturers produce cat food containing special oils , like mineral oil, that help break up the hairballs, allowing for easier digestion. Shedding hair is also minimized because the oils help strengthen it.

Special treats for your cats containing petroleum products will also help preventing cat hairballs. These petroleum-based treats help coat the tummy and digestive system for smooth passage through the body. There are several methods to administer these petroleum-based treats. Some cats may be fed simply by spoon. With others, try putting some food on their snout hoping they will lick it off. If these methods fail, spread some on their paws and watch them lick the treats off that way. If you follow this advice you will encounter the cats and hairballs phenomenon less and less.

The ties between cats and hairballs can not be broken and cat hairballs are here to stay. It is impossible to know when cats fail to digest hair and it is blocking their system. One may know of this blockage only once a cat coughs or vomit. If the hairball refuses to come out, symptoms of the blockage will consist of the following: coughing and hacking for more than a day, lack of appetite and lack of body eliminations. With the presence of these symptoms a cat must have surgery to release the blockage.

For more info, see Cats And Hairballs and Cat Hairballs [http://www.blog.new-cat.com]. Ron King is a web developer; visit his website Cats.

Copyright 2007 Ron King. This article may be reprinted if the resource box is left intact and the links live.

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