Cats and hairball: there is never one without the other

Cause

You can get hypnotized by the almost maniac self-care of cats, who keep licking their coat or their friend’s coat. This attitude makes cat an ideal resident for apartments, especially in large cities. Unfortunately, coat liking has a hidden danger that every cat owner may have to face, while living with his feline companion: hairballs, technically defined trichobezoars. Cats are cleanliness and hygiene great lovers; therefore we can say: cats and hairballs: there is not one without the other.

They spend most of their time licking themselves. This operation called “grooming”, eliminate dirt and residues from their coat. If cats live in home they spend much more time on this activity to fight boredom and to relax. In this case, especially in cat breeds with long hair, there is the serious risk of ingestion of considerable quantities of hair.

The formation of compact hairballs, with more or less elongated shapes, resulting from prolonged and continuous hair ingestion during daily cleaning, occurs normally. Hairballs take shape in the stomach and gradually become more and more compact and large. They stimulate vomiting contractions and the stomach expels the hairballs spontaneously and naturally. You will see the cat coughing, contracting the abdomen and stretching the neck to expel the hairballs.

In case the hairballs are too big to be expelled, they remain in the cat’s stomach or pass into his intestine to be eliminated with stools. If the hairballs are too large, they cannot go through the digestive tract and cause total or partial intestinal obstruction and consequently acute or chronic constipation. To remove these hairballs it may be necessary that cats undergo surgery.

Solution

In order to prevent these unpleasant situations, you need to implement some expedients:

1. brush your cat’s coat with special brushes and combs or with pet hair remover gloves every day;
2. avoid his excessive boredom by providing games or offering funny activities;
3. you can face the problem also through the nourishment, by selecting cat products that contain functional ingredients, rich in insoluble fiber such as pea fiber, in order to reduce the risk of hairball formation. Pea fiber is recognized to stimulate the intestinal transit, thus facilitating the expulsion of hairballs through stools, thanks to its high fiber content – especially insoluble – able to absorb a lot of water and counteract constipation and lazy intestine.

Gheda Petfood has taken the commitment to take care of cats with this predisposition and has designed various products of the lines: Unica Natura ed Unica Classe. Cats can live a quiet life, without concerns.

Unica Natura has formulated 6 dry foods to combat this problem, 3 for indoor cats (life mainly within domestic walls) and 3 for outdoor cats (outdoor life), find out more

Unica Classe wanted to further segment the response to the hairball problem, based on the cat’s lifestyle and therefore formulated 5 dry foods with different characteristics:

• 1 INDOOR dry food for adult cats mainly living indoors; find out more..
• 1 STERILIZED dry food for sterilized adult cats; find out more..
• 3 dry foods for specific needs: DEFENCE (find out more..), LONGEVITY (find out more..), AGEING (find out more..).