My Experienced Cat People, Help is needed.

[Amanda C]

Hey there, thanks for all the advise. She is our first cat. Although we have 4 dogs and a sugar glider. All the dogs are on a grain free food. They'd be on a raw diet if we could afford it for all of them!

The lady we got her from gave us her remaining food supply. She'd been with us for about a week and a half before she started having hairballs. Where she'd never had any with the previous owner. Could some of this be that she's catching a lot of field mice? And eating some of them? It was about the time that she stopped bringing us her trophies, and we started noticing mouse parts around the house, that she started having hairball issues.

[Andie]

Gracie has tummy issues with fish based food too so she needs more turf and less surf. Amanda said she forgot to mention that.

[Karen]

The field mice have much shorter hair than a cat does, I doubt that could contribute to her problem. They are also quite nutritious - nice and high in the taurine that a kitty needs and that they put into commercial foods just to make up for it!

[emily_the_spoiled]

The other thing to do it try adding some canned pumpkin to her diet. Think of hairballs this way ... they can only go in one end but they can come out two ends. To increase the probability they go out the back end (versus the front end), pumpkin helps "move things along" Usually most cats like canned pumpkin so just mix it in with her food.

[Freedom]

Yes as mentioned, mice are part of the natural diet, she should have no "side effects" from those!

[catmandu]

We find that the furminator is great for taking off fur you can almost make another Cat with the excess fur!!!
And there are is always hairball remedy Cat Food and Treats!!!

[snakemama]

I finally had to start keeping Sherpa shaved. His hairball problem was out of control, and he hates being brushed but somehow he doesn't mind being shaved. Silly cat.

[Amanda C]

As Andie said, Gracie is an indoor/outdoor kitty. She come in and goes out as she wishes. She cries at the door when she's ready to go in or out. We make sure she's inside before we go to bed because we live in a active coyote area amd don't want to risk her getting hurt.

Thank you for everyone's advice. Even though the vet linked the hairballs with her very upset tummy and diarrhea, I have found a hairball remedy that seemed to be helping before I had to take her in for the diarrhea.

She's doing good and is a happy kitty.