I don't know that you can STOP it, but you need to groom daily (comb, use a
shedding tool, and/or I've heard good things about Zoom Groom) and get some
laxatone from your vet or petromalt at the pet store and give them a little
twice a week. Should help anyhow.

"Margret" <no> wrote:

I think the other advice about grooming is probably most useful.

As for the medicine. Some cats well like Vaseline right off of
your finger. I bought a jar dedicated to that. Spray my finger
with rubbing alcohol, blow it dry, and then dip it in the Vaseline
every few days. It's sort of like a cat lubricant [silly], it
helps the fur come out either end. I think it's funny how my cat
craves it.

By the way. Please don't take it out on your cat. Nervousness can
cause your cat to throw up more. If it's like mine, you can reduce
the vomiting just by helping it feel better.

Good luck.

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From: "Margret" <no>

Brushing! Lots and lots of brushing. And then a little more brushing.
Followed by a REAL GOOD brushing.
Seriously.....If you can brush the fur against the grain (tail to head, that is),
you'll usually get TONS of loose hair.
Then give the cat a dab of hairball preventive once a week.
A hacked up hairball should then be a very rare or nonexistent occurance.

A tiny knob of butter or olivio marg on top of their food helps a bit
too.  Brushing is the most important, followed by the tubes of stuff
(various names) that you can get to move it through.  Anything oily
helps.  Sardines in oil, tuna in oil etc.

The best is to deal with the root cause... the hair.

To that end, brushing often so your brush picks up more of the hair than
the cat's tongue does.

In any case, a long haired feline does need to be brushed on a regular
basis otherwise the hair situation does get out of hand... so to speak.

I have my long hairs on Hill's Hairball formula, works great. I couldn't get
enough Cat Lax in them to do any good.

ron

When I added wet food to their diet, both my cats had less hairballs.
I second the recommendations on brushing!

Brushing will help, and if your cat decides it doesn't like the brush
(like our long hair did) one of those "grooming gloves" available at a
pet store will work. It's not as effective as a brush, but does remove
some excess hair.

We also mix a small bag of hairball control food into our regular big bag
of dry food, and that seems to have helped the most, and all of our cats
seem to like it. We mix a small bag of the Iams hairball control (orange
bag) into their regular feed, Science Diet Ocean Fish. Of course,
depending on your cat's whims, tastes, and/or litter box behavior, you
may need to find different brands or flavors.

Others have mentioned certain hairball treatments like vaseline or
specific remedies that come in tube or treat forms. You may have good
luck with those, but our finicky long hair didn't like any of the ones we
tried.

Changing his diet by adding the hairball food reduced his hairball
hacking from once every three or four days to once every three weeks or
so.

HTH,