Ragdoll Cat Forums

Hope everyone's well! Weather here is really awful today so much for the beginning of Summer! Its grey, dark, cold and wet! More like December than June!

Anyways, enough of the moaning! Couple of questions that I've been thinking about this morning.

1) Wednesday evening Charlie started retching as if he was going to be sick, not loads, just a couple of times. Nothing actually came up though. Chris said it sounded as if he was trying to get a furball up! Now I've had cats all my life but always short hair and I've never ever experienced a furball incident! Chris had a long hair cat when he was a kid and said thats exactly the sound his old cat used to make. So yesterday I was in the petshop and had a look for furball treats to help Charlie out if thats what was bothering him (he's not retched since either) but all the furball treats I could find were only for kittens over 6 months (Charlie will be 4 months on Monday) Obviously I didn't get any. So is there anything available to help out with furballs for younger kittens?

And Question 2 .... Catnip ... I brought Charlie a catnip mouse yesterday, which he loves! Goes totally crazy for it! Can he play with this as much as he likes? Or does it have to be limited as its got catnip in? I let him have it for about 15 minutes last night then took it off of him, is this right or am I just being an over paranoid Mummy?!

Thank you all!

If it was just the one episode of retching I don't think I would be too concerned. It does seem a little early for him to be having hairballs - but I guess it's possible.

As for a catnip toy - I think you can give it to him all you want. It shouldn't hurt him.

Thank you Teresa

I only take Maisie's catnip off her when she gets a little too crazy! She loves it!

Catnip toys should be ok for as long as he's interested, I don't think there's that much catnip in them and he can't eat it anyway. As for the retching, I'm not sure what you can give him but grooming more may help reduce the amount of fur he swallows when grooming. There are foods that are supposed to reduce hairballs but again, they are adult formulas so not really much help.