hairballs and diabetes

[Marshmallow's Mom]

My cat Marvin threw up a HUGE furball last night. He doesn't normally do this. But he grooms A LOT and have always wondered why I don't see more hairballs from him.

I'm wondering if hairballs are part of the equation for him. If he is dealing with a major backup of hairballs in his system, I would think that would mess with his BG.

 

[Kris & Teasel]

That could possibly happen. Right now, though, I think he needs a higher insulin dose. Continue those 0.25 u increases every couple of days until you get a lot of blue on his SS. At that point you can hold doses longer.

 

[Sandi and Toby]

But obviously hairballs certainly aren't good either. So you might want to keep an eye on it.

Unfortunately, a lot of the over the counter formulas contain a lot of sugary stuff. We had a scare a month ago when Whispy was eating poorly. I suspected things like a UTI, general tummy ache, etc. An xray showed a **massive** amount of tightly bound hair in his gut. Our vet was pretty concerned that it might not be able to pass through on its own, and surgery with my old man scares the heck out of me. My vet suggested seeing if he would eat Vaseline or mineral oil (of course he would not), and although there are conflicting things about coconut oil and triglycerides/MCT, he LOVED the taste of it, and so the coconut oil scared me less than surgery to remove compacted hairballs, at least short term. I don't intend for it to be an ongoing thing, I just needed his system cleaned out good, and quickly, and the coconut oil did the trick in about 4 days of keeping him oiled up, isolated and monitoring the litter box. Phew.

Ongoing, we are going to give him his lion cut more often than we already were. If Marvin grooms a ton, you could try the Vaseline or mineral oil, check to see how your vet feels about coconut oil, or consider a short hair cut.

Good luck, he's a real cutie

Best,
Sandi.

 

[Veronica & Babu-chiri]

I have 3 hymies with massive amount of hair so I can relate to your problem and with Babu it started to be complicated because most of over the counter hairball solutions them have sugar or some syrup in them you could try as they mentioned vaseline or SEB (Slippery elm bark ), SEB is normally used for nausea, diarrhea or constipation but I've found it works very well on hair balls too I give it to them usually when they start changing coats twice a year like two or three times a week for two or three weeks depending on how they are shedding not all the time but I think you could give it for a longer period and it won't hurt a lot of people give it regulary