Last week I met Focus and her owner for the first time. Focus is a fluffy Tal-Madonna-coloured female cat.
Fur balls cause stomach upsets and the first symptoms are vomiting, gagging and wretching
She had found herself trapped in the engine of a car when still a kitten, not knowing it was to be the best thing to ever happen to her, as it paved the way to meeting her new owner.
On her part, the cat’s owner had no idea that when her horoscope said she would meet a new special friend, it would be the four-legged type and in the engine of her brand new Ford. She had never had pets before and was not even particularly fond of them. Now, the situation is completely the opposite.
Anyone who knows cats knows that, invariably, all tricoloured cats are female. This is due to genetic reasons – colour genes are linked to the X sex chromosome. To have a tricoloured cat, you need to have two X chromosomes, which only occurs in females. The sex chromosomes in males are X and Y.
Tal-Madonna cats are patterned in a haphazard mix of white, black and ginger. Technically speaking, they are referred to as Calico-coloured cats. I did try to look up the origins of the Maltese reference, yet I could find none.
Maybe one of our linguistic readers could give us a clue as to where this information may be found. What I did find is that Calico cats can be found all over the world, and that in many places, folklore links them to good things. This may have something to do with it.
Focus is a common cat with a common problem: fur balls. These are literally balls of fur formed in the intestine when too much fur is being ingested by your cat. These cause stomach upsets and the first symptoms are vomiting, gagging and wretching.
A fur ball may or may not be brought up. Fur balls have the shape of short cigars and certainly do not smell nice. In severe cases, your cat could lose apetite, feel lethargic and suffer constipation.
Fur ball problems are best prevented and this is done, first of all, through regular grooming; the longer the fur, the more regular this exercise should be. Kittens should be groomed from an early age, so that they can get used to it. A daily five-minute grooming exercise is far better than trying to solve matted areas every three or four days on long-haired cats.
After grooming your cat, pass a damp cloth over its coat to collect any loose hair that could otherwise be ingested. It would be a good idea to do this even with short-haired cats when they are shedding a larger amount of fur during the moulting months, mostly in spring and autumn. Moulting, which is the natural process of changing winter and summer coats, may occur over a longer period with cats confined indoors.
Besides proper grooming, there are a number of other remedies one could resort to, depending on how manageable the situation is. These take the form of simply adding a few drops of oil to your cat’s food or administering fur ball paste directly to your cat on a regular basis, as well as diets specially formulated to reduce this problem. All these remedies help provide your cat with a mild laxative to reduce the possibilty of fur ball accumulation.
With cats, one has to be very careful because vomiting can also be a sign of some serious conditions. It is extremely important that vomiting is monitored carefully and if in doubt, check it out with your veterinarian.
Focus’s owner got the fright of her life when she saw her gagging, let alone when she saw this alien ball shoot out of her. Focus being her first cat, all this was very new to her.
Luckily, Focus reacted to treatment immediately and I am sure the rest of her life will be very different and a far cry from the day before it found itself in engine trouble.
thisweekwiththevet@gmail.com
Dr Debattista is a veterinary surgeon.