It is sometimes used to get food to transit faster through the body along with the hair balls. His specialist uses it sometimes for this purpose but I take it and I know in me it can cause a little too fast transit time. He has IBD so his gut doesn't always work so well. His hair ball accumulation is massive. I do have the pumpkin puree and give it to him sometimes mixed in his food. I thought I had read here on one of the posts that someone here was using the ranitidine on their IBD cat. Well I guess it is out now so I will start back with the pumpkin puree. My other choices would be to have him entirely clipped but it would make me so sad because he is such a handsome long haired white kitty. I do have cat lax so I guess I will try that now. He was on Pepcid and it did help with his acidy stomach in the morning but he was still bringing up huge hair balls the likes of such I've never seen before, ever. Thanks everyone for replying. IBD is such a frustrating condition in cats and constantly changes so you end up trying everything available.