Kitten vomits night meals, help :)

[Embarg0]

Hi there,
I'm a bit stumped by some of Mochi's (my 6 months old kitten) reactions to his food. Im hoping to reduce the size of the list of hypotheses I've got for what is going amiss.

I typically feed him a large meal in the morning and two smaller meals at night. He used to eat whiskas wet food, and had no issues other than some dander in his coat. One chicken dinner can in the morning and one in the evening.
Then I transitioned him to a higher quality wet food in anticipation of eventually having him start on raw food. No issues there, so over a period of a week I transitioned him to the raw food. He seemed always hungry so I may have fed him larger portions than necessary, I'm not sure. I would feed him in 3-4 small raw portions a night along with a larger meal in the morning.
After a couple weeks or more of no issues, he started vomiting almost every night, for a week. Consistently he'd be throwing up all of his food 3-5 hours after eating it, except for the morning meal which he managed to keep down. There was usually no bile with it, but he'd meow a lot before and then his stomach would convulse, emptying itself. I took him to the vet for a round of tests, they found nothing amiss, even with X-rays. They gave him a nausea suppressant and some easy to digest wet food for the next week. They said sometimes this just happens, stomach gets upset. Then I started feeding him raw food again after, and the vomiting started again, still at night. That's when I gave up on the raw thinking maybe something was amiss with it specifically, and switched back to the weruva wet food.

Again, no issues for at least a couple weeks. Then night vomit started happening consistently again, the first couple times it was just liquid, then the undigested food. So I feed him one whole can in the morning, and 1/3 at dinner and 1/3 before bed. Feeding less in the night seems to have helped avoid vomit but it's not completely conclusive yet. I'm afraid that maybe he is not getting enough food now though, since I think theoretically he should be ingesting closer to 3 cans rather than just 1 and 2/3. So I'm working on a few changes:

1. Feeding him in an upright/standing position for the night meals
2. Feeding him from a mini muffin dish to slow him down. He eats really really fast
3. Introducing a higher calorie kitten wet food slowly to transition him to it, hopefully making his stomach less full while not starving him

Now I'm wondering:
1. if you have any other ideas for what might cause this rejection of night meals after a couple weeks of being on a new food?
2. If he is vomiting up 3-5 hours after ingesting the food doesn't that mean that it's an issue other than eating too fast?
3. Do you think I could transition him back to raw food once he consistently keeps food down, since it seems like the raw food itself wasn't the culprit anyway? Would feeding him only two meals of raw a day be feasible for a kitten?

Thanks y'all!

[bobbys girl]

I'm curious as to why you want to feed him a raw food diet? I don't know what the others think, but three (large?) tins of food a day sounds a lot for a kitten.

If the vet can't find anything specific it might be a combination of things. You may even have a cat like our Willow. If we feed her too much in one go, or she gets upset by one of the others - everything comes back in one go!

[Janey]

I’ve never fed any of mine a raw diet, however I do let mine feed as and when so they can eat little and often, rather than set meal times and that’s always worked well, no rushing food nor weight issues. Have you ever tried that? if you are out during the day and he would everything you leave at once you could set a timer so your kitten gets lots of smaller meal so he feels like he’s not having to gobble it all down in one go. Or if you are in, feeding him small amounts of wet when he goes to his dish and leaving some dry down all the time to nibble on.

[Embarg0]

Right, the question of raw and free feeding is a sort of separate one, I feel strongly about not free feeding in order to get predictable and manageable energy levels, along with the other Cons of feeding kibble (food quality, dehydration and urinary crystals, so on)

I want to feed raw as a result of extensive research, because of the high protein content, making it biologically much more appropriate along with the other reasons found by doing some googling
Feeding exclusively canned food has its own issues (tooth health) so raw is ideal, or a blend of canned and raw.

It seems odd that it would be that he is ingesting too much food since the morning meal is larger and he keeps that down every time. For Willow, does she ever vomit from eating too much several hours after the meal?

[bobbys girl]

For Willow, does she ever vomit from eating too much several hours after the meal?

No, it's usually fairly soon after. I see what you are saying. Have you explained this to the vet? It does seem very strange.

[Embarg0]

Okay cool, if the slowing the eating and switching to higher calorie food doesn't work I'll consult another vet..
Thanks y'all