You would never think of giving poison to cats, but you may be doing it by accident. In fact, overloading your cats' diet with some hairball remedies 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?

These problems are totally 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 'just loves' his petroleum based hairball remedy and you 'just love' 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.

Now that you know better that indulging your cats with this type of hairball remedy 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. Now that your cats are off the petroleum based product, their digestive system will be able to absorb the vitamin D again.

Let's now consider completely removing this 'petroleum based' product from your cats diets. Would you swallow something made of petroleum? That's right - have a pint of oil to goo up your insides. Its really not a far stretch to consider this as something close to giving poison to cats.

Switch your cats 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, constipation, diarrhea, vomiting, violent retching and abdominal cramp.

Its easy to give this herbal 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 nasty hairballs.

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Written by Kate Rieger using tags: cat care, cat hairball remedies, cat hairball remedy, family, pet, Pet Care, Pets, poison to cat