Poison To Cats – Poisoning Your Cat With His Hairball Goop?
Date: Saturday July 4, 2009Posted in: CAT CARE
It probably never occurred to you that you are damaging your cats with the hairball medicine you give them. Certainly not that you were giving poison to cats. In fact, overloading your cats’ diet with some hairball products can prevent absorption of a vital vitamin.
Many of us rely on vitamin supplements to provide a nutritional boost to our human diets. Perhaps you even thought about supplementing your cat’s diet with vitamins. After all, didn’t you read somewhere that kittens with diets low in vitamin D develop rickets? Or what about older cats with low levels of vitamin D in their diet suffering from brittle bones?
Both of these conditions are possible, but such deficiencies are rare in today’s cat diet world. That said, it is possible that you may cause your cat to have a vitamin D deficiency simply by treating him for hairballs. You could be literally giving poison to cats when you treat them with hairball remedies that have a mineral oil or petroleum jelly base.
If your cat ‘adores’ his petroleum based hairball remedy and you ‘adore’ giving it to him, you both may need to back off the program a bit. Excessive use of this type of hair ball remedy can interfere with the absorption of fat soluble vitamins, including vitamin D.
If you indulged your cats with this type of hairball remedy, but now know better, don’t be tempted to add vitamin D back into their diet. Just continue to feed a high quality cat food which is full of vitamins cats need. Once your cats are off the petroleum based product, their digestive system will be able to absorb the vitamin D again.
Now let’s consider completely removing this ‘petroleum based’ product from your cats diets. After all, would you ingest something made of petroleum? Here, have a pint of crude to slick up your innards. Its really not a far stretch to consider this as something close to giving poison to cats.
Consider switching over to an herbal hairball treatment. There are herbal compounds that provide a gentle yet effective solution to cat hairballs. Psyllium nigrum is a very high source of dietary fiber while Aloe ferox (a well known medicinal herb) is known for its beneficial effect on digestive functioning. Nux vom is a proven homeopathic remedy often prescribed for indigestion, diarrhea, constipation, vomiting, violent retching and abdominal cramps.
Its easy to give this natural remedy and if you have a cat who hates the other products, bets are that he’ll never even notice when you add a bit to his canned cat food. Just give 1/2 capsule 2 times daily for 10 days, followed by 1/2 capsule once daily as a maintenance dose for cats who are prone to awful hairballs.
Related posts:
- Poison To Cats – Are You Poisoning Your Cat With His Hairball Medication?
- Kidney In Cats – Your “I’m Not an Idiot Guide” to Recognizing Kidney Failure In Cats
- Did You Know That Natural Cat Food Can Extend Your Cats Life?
- For Cats in Kidney Failure – Understanding the Tests For Cats in Kidney Failure
- Give Your Persian Cat A Balanced Diet
