Is Your Cat Vomiting After Meals? Might Be Time for a Raised Food Bowl!

Cats, like any animal, love to chow down on a good meal. Sometimes, as some cat owners can relate, cats will enjoy their meal so much that they regurgitate. This can be caused by a number of things, such as eating too fast, food bowl being too low, a stomach issue, and more. In a healthy cat, regurgitation shouldn’t be happening regularly after mealtime, but if it is, there is something that you may want to try to improve your situation – a raised food dish.

Raised food dishes give your cat the same access to their food, just a bit higher up. Think about taking their dish and placing it on another object to keep it off the ground by a few inches. You can purchase racks or risers to put your regular food dishes on, and there are even some pre-made raised food dishes. Either way, this is a great way to feed a cat who is vomiting after meals. This is because the added height forces them to change their behaviour while also aiding with digestion.

Gravity

It may sound simple, but gravity plays a big role here. By using a raised food dish, your cat no longer has to lean forward and down towards the floor to get their next bite. Instead, they swallow their food, bite by bite, without risk of it coming back up. 

A floor-positioned food dish forces them to get their face down by the floor, lower than their stomach, while they fight gravity to get each bite in. Imagine eating, with your mouth only, while hunched forward. Eventually, it might grow difficult to keep food down between bites. 

Bloating

When a cat eats from the floor, its stomach compresses and fills more quickly. This method of eating can also lead to quite a bit of air being swallowed and causing additional bloating. 

Posture

A raised food dish also helps your cat keep their neck and shoulders feeling healthy. The way most cat food dishes are designed leads to cats having to hunch their shoulders in and lay down in front of the bowl. This can become uncomfortable and in older cats with arthritis, it can be downright painful!

Cleanliness

One last consideration to make here is cleanliness. Even in the cleanest of homes, dirt on the floor can blow around and into your cat’s food dish, causing contamination without even realizing it. Raised food dishes typically don’t see anywhere near the same amount of contamination as those left on the floor. Not to mention, sometimes cats can be messy eaters and keeping the dish off the floor at least lets you see if dirt has built up around the area they eat in.

Final Thoughts

When asking yourself, “Should I raise my cat’s food dish?” the answer is most likely yes. Even if your cat doesn’t have an issue with vomiting or other indigestion, a raised food bowl is going to benefit them regardless. Whether it helps with their posture, avoids arthritic pain in the shoulders and neck, or helps them keep their meals down, a raised dish provides benefits to all cats! Just make sure it isn’t so high up they can’t reach it properly!