Hairballs in cats. What malt paste does, and what a brush does

Cats swallow hair while grooming. Most of it goes the normal way, some comes back up, and both are unremarkable. It becomes a subject with long-haired cats, during a moult, and in animals that groom a great deal.

The order is not in doubt

Brushing beats any paste. Every hair left in the brush does not end up in the stomach. Daily for a long-haired cat, several times a week for a short-haired one during a moult. It costs minutes, and it is the only thing in this text whose effect nobody disputes.

After that comes water intake and a ration with enough fibre, and only then the paste.

What is in a malt paste

A classic malt paste is malt extract, oils and fibres. It is meant to make swallowed hair pass more easily through the gut rather than collect. There is no dosing study in cats for that effect: we list malt as an ingredient but do not rate its amount, and the product page says so.

What you can still compare is everything else: how much paste a daily portion is, what it costs a day, and whether anything else is in there that you want rated.

When it is no longer about hair

Coughing up the occasional hairball is normal. Repeated retching with nothing produced, loss of appetite, listlessness or no stool passing are not, and in that order it becomes urgent quickly. The question is then not which paste, but how fast you can reach a vet.

Supplements are not medicines and cannot treat any condition.