What Does A Normal Cat Hairball Look Like
Is this a disease.
What does a normal cat hairball look like. So much for hair ball. Cat hairballs also called furballs hair balls or fur balls are a fairly regular event in the lives of most felines and their human companions. A cat hairball is a bolus of matted hair and food which forms in the intestinal tract of a cat. Occasionally cats will regurgitate some sort of mucus or vomit with hair in it but a true hairball will be somewhere in the range of the sizes listed above.
What does a normal cat hairball look like. Normally the cat hairballs take a tubular shape. Depending on the cat and the amount of hair that is regurgitated hairballs can be as small as a pinky or as large as a middle or index finger. A hairball fur ball is the unpleasant looking cigar shaped wad of fur your cat might vomit up.
You probably know one when you see one but to be clear hairballs are thick mats of hair that are usually tubular in formnot shaped like a ball despite the nameand are covered in a slippery or slimy substance mucus. Usually your cat will vomit the hairball to get rid of it. Its not a disease its cat behavior to push the hairballs out of their bodies. It gets the tubular shape when hair gathers in your cats esophagus.
Normally the cats digestive system is able to handle the hair and it simply passes through the intestinal tract and out in the feces. The more oval shape comes from passing through the esophagus. As we have mentioned earlier the tube like shape of the hairball or what you can call a tube of hairs is due to the similar shape of the esophagus. If the hair reaches the stomach but doesnt leave the stomach the material that is vomited may be more round in shape.
Because hairballs pass through the narrow esophagus on the way out they often appear thin and tube like rather than round. It can be disturbing to a new cat owner to find a wet black hairball on their carpet that looks kind of like it came from the other end of their kitty. However in some instances rather than passing through the intestinal tract the hair is vomited instead this may seem like the cat is coughing up a hairball. When they do they swallow the hair which is usually expelled as feces.
Grooming your cat is one of the best things.
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