A spiral of vomit?

[iadao]

TL:DR: any thoughts on the idea of deliberately putting down far too much dry food so there will always be more than 3 cats can realistically eat?
(hate to be wasteful but it’s the next thing I’m considering trying to solve the problems I’m having with my cats).

The situation:
We have 3 cats, 2 of the 3 are vomiting so regularly that we are cleaning up piles of sick on average once per day. One of the cats is prone to vomiting during the act of eating wet food, the other is most likely to vomit fairly soon after the morning dry food.
This is not a hairball thing, the piles of sick only occasionally have hairballs in them.
All 3 cats have had recent check-ups at the vet and have been found to be in good health. Beyond that all 3 cats seem generally happy and in good spirits.

Background details:
2 of the cats are male and age 7, they have grown up together. The one that is being sick now has always been prone to vomiting, but is certainly not getting better and possibly getting worse.
The 3rd cat is a recent addition within the last 3 months, a 2 year old female cat. She is the one who tends to vomit right in the middle of consuming wet food (like back into the bowl). She also has a history of vomiting quite a bit (in her previous home), but it has certainly increased lately.

The 3 have adapted to each other quite well socially, they play together, will sit/sleep close to each other, but shared grooming is not yet universal.

‘Traditionally’ the dry food is handled by an auto-feeder that dispenses food 3 times per day. The wet food is given once per day around human dinner time.
On the matter of food/brands: when the new cat arrived what she was getting would have changed, but her tendency to get sick didn’t escalate until after she had been around for over a month. For the other two, well, erm, being aware that changing a cat’s food can either provoke sickness or have them reject the new food, from day 1 they have been fed ‘mixed food’. What I mean by this is I will take a few different brands, mix it together, then put it in the feeder, likewise I will have a variety of wet food, and they never get the same brand 2 days in a row. By extension I give them a range of food qualities anything from round Felix up to Royal Canin/Hills, avoiding only suspiciously cheap or ridiculously over-priced brands.

And finally, they all drink a decent amount of water.
Current assumption:
The 2 cats that keep puking are vigorously competing with each other for food and eating too quickly and this is making them sick.

Solutions that have not worked:
• The boy with the history of puke has been specifically checked by his vet regarding his overly frequent vomiting and the vet said he seems to have no medical issue that would cause this. (This check was before the addition of the 3rd cat).
• Spreading the food across multiple dishes and multiple locations. The 2 hungry-holes just go on a treasure hunt to see who can eliminate the most plates fastest.
• Adding a significant amount of gastrointestinal dry food to the mix.

The current, not really working, solution:
Feeding them in very small amounts scattered throughout the day. I mean 1 teaspoon of wet food at a time, on an hourly basis, until the full amount has been served.
The auto feeder has been reduced from serving size 8 portions to size 3 portions and we are supplementing that by adding pinch of dry food anytime we see the bowl completely empty (which seems to be around 10 times per day). This has slightly reduced the problem, however its untenable because it means that anytime the home is devoid of humans for multiple hours the cats are all legitimately very hungry by the time we get back. This in some ways exacerbates the issue, and is furthermore cultivating a situation where we are worried the other cat (the one who never pukes) is not getting his fair share because unlike the other two he is very laid back about getting his food so it’s usually gone by the time he checks in.

Next ‘solution’ we are currently considering:

Since the cats are trying to out eat each other they perhaps perceive a lack of food.
We are considering basically putting on a constantly full buffet of dry food and doubling or tripling the amount of wet food that is served (and serving it all at once).
This would almost certainly result in a lot of piles of sick in the short term, but the logic is that maybe if we do this for a week or two the cats will get it into their heads that there is plenty of food and they don’t need to try and out eat each other.

Is this just completely wrong headed? Or is it worth a try?
Certainly eager to hear other suggestions!

[Mollycat]

I get your logic and am a big fan of free feeding because cats normally regulate their own food intake, but !!! Did you tell the vet they are being sick this much? What does the vet say about it?

Firstly a question for the boys, when you say they have been checked, have they just been looked at or have they had blood tests? At 7 years old there could be other problems. Your new cat having also started and being so much younger, this suggests either something infectious, environmental or behavioural.

Parasites, disease, the food - is this cheap food or high quality protein food? Overeating can also be a sign of lacking some nutrients, too much rubbish in the ingredients, or a whole lot of stress issues. Do you have just one dry feeder for the three of them to share? That could be a source of stress for them. Has your boy been sick since the girl arrived, or was he doing it before?

Other than that in terms of obsessive overeating I had this problem with my two. My girl with a difficult history would keep going back to the food so she got really fat and my poor boy would go back to his bowl and find it empty. I tried everything including putting down meals when he asked, putting down enormous amounts, making regular meal times, everything, any attempt to limit food just made her anxious and aggressive, believe me I was desperate. In the end I bought microchip feeders and put her on diet food. She felt more secure because her food was always there, she got down to a reasonable weight because the food was less calorific, and he always had his food. 2 years later, I was all pleased with myself, till a routine blood test showed she was hyperthyroid. She has now been treated and her weight free fed normal food and always some left in the dish is a nice slimline and happy cat. I would really recommend these feeders they are well worth the money and the cats can be fed different diets if needed.

Another thought, do your kitties have access to grass? If they are indoor, growing grass for them is really helpful for their digestive system. A good kitty grass doesn't make them sick, or at least they might bring up grass if they binge on it like mine do, but it supports the digestive flow.

[Ruth B]

I can feel for you, cleaning up cat sick is probably my least favourite part of owning cats. However I'm not sure that just putting everything down once a day will help matters. There is a lot of good advice in what Mollycat has said, and a couple of things I want to add.

I would ask how much wet food you are giving them, I also have three cats and go through 6 tins or pouches a day (about 500 - 600g a day depending on pouch or tin size) between them, they also have dried food freely available. The wet food gets put down 3 times a day and any that hasn't been eaten from the previous meal thrown away, this means it doesn't have time to go off which is a concern in a centrally heated house. My suggestion would be to instead of doing the tiny hourly feeds or the all at once option would be to try something in between, perhaps 4 small meals a day.

From what i have experienced, when a cat is sick straight after eating it is often due to them bolting the food down too quickly, this is especially true for dried food as it expands in the stomach and the cat suddenly finds themselves over full. Have you tried the 'toys' that are designed to slow a cats eating down, plastic balls with holes in for dried food that they have to roll around to get the food to come out, strangely shaped bowls for wet food.

While some cats are very good at regulating what they eat to maintain a healthy weight others can get very food focused, particularly ones that don't go out a lot and who's day ends up a routine of eating and sleeping, these are the ones that are most in danger of becoming seriously overweight if food is freely available. It could be, if you have one of the latter, the others feel the need to eat what is available as quickly as possible believing it won't be there when they come back and are over filling themselves. You say your autofeeder dispenses the dried food three times a day, could you set it to dispense the food more often and in smaller amounts or even introduce another one or two feeders and have them dispense at irregular intervals so the cats have to keep checking around to see which one might have food available.

Making them search and work for their food might sound harsh, but it is really a more natural way of feeding then having a large amount put down at certain times, and if you can include the food with play activity, such as using the feed balls, then it is even more akin to the 'hunt then eat' reflex that is natural in cats.