He wolfs his dinner and brings it straight back up ten minutes later. Is it the food, the speed, or something wrong with him?

Alfie, 5, neutered, has never been a delicate eater, but since the kitten arrived in the spring he eats like the bowl is about to be confiscated. Head down, doesn't chew, done in under a minute. And now, maybe twice a week, ten minutes after dinner there's a neat little pile of biscuits on the hall mat. Mostly whole. Not much liquid. He then wanders back to the kitchen and looks at me like I might do dinner again.

No drama with it, no heaving that I've heard, no sign he feels rough, he's playing with the kitten straight after. Weight seems the same, he's a solid lad. Food hasn't changed. The kitten's bowl is in the same room though, and I think he's racing her even though she's on different food and couldn't care less about his.

So is this actual vomiting or is it the thing where it just comes back because it went down too fast? Is twice a week a vet thing or a slow-feeder thing? And does the kitten being in the room actually make a cat eat faster or am I giving Alfie too much credit for a plan?

Smudge, the hoover, did precisely this for a year and I assumed it was just who she was. Two things stopped it almost completely: one of those maze bowls with the ridges so she has to fish the biscuits out, and before I bought that, a muffin tin with a few biscuits in each cup, which is free and works nearly as well. Went from two or three times a week to maybe once a month. The "looks at you for a second dinner" thing is exactly her.

Otis does the speed-eating too. The thing our vet asked us, which I'd never thought about, was WHEN it comes up and what it looks like. Whole food within minutes of eating is a different conversation from digested food an hour later, and she wanted a number for how often, not "sometimes".

Whole, barely digested food reappearing within minutes of a fast meal, in a cat who is bright, playing, and holding his weight, is most often regurgitation rather than vomiting, and the fix is usually mechanical: slow the meal down. Regurgitation is passive, the food comes up in a tube shape with little warning and no abdominal heaving, because it never got much further than the oesophagus. Vomiting involves visible effort, drooling or lip licking beforehand, and often bile or fluid, and it tends to happen later. MillieAndOtis's vet asked the right questions, because the timing and the appearance are what separate the two.

Speed, and competition, are the usual drivers. A cat who thinks another cat might get to the bowl does eat faster, so Alfie's plan is real even if the kitten has no interest in his food. The things that help are the ones smudgesmum describes: a slow-feeder or puzzle bowl, splitting the same daily amount into 4 to 6 small meals rather than one or two big ones, feeding the two cats in separate rooms or at least out of sight of each other, and keeping the biscuits' total the same rather than adding extra because the first lot came back up. The site's guide to how much to feed a cat covers working out that daily amount so the small meals add up correctly.

Where it stops being a slow-feeder problem: twice a week is already more than the once or twice a month that counts as occasional, so I'd give the slowed meals a week or two and expect it to drop to rare or nothing. If it carries on at anything like the same rate, if there is bile, blood, or digested food rather than whole biscuits, or if he loses weight, goes off food, or seems flat afterwards, that's an appointment rather than a bowl. Those point at things a bowl cannot fix, hairballs, a food intolerance, inflammatory bowel disease, a swallowed object, and in an older cat kidney disease or an overactive thyroid, and the guide to vomiting in cats sets out how a vet works through that list. I'd also want the mouth looked at at his next check, because a sore tooth can make a cat bolt food rather than chew it.

None of that is a diagnosis of Alfie, whom I haven't examined. It's the general picture, and your own vet, who can weigh him and feel his abdomen, is the person to tell you which side of the line he sits.

smudgesmum said:

a muffin tin with a few biscuits in each cup, which is free and works nearly as well

Seconding the muffin tin, and adding the other free one: a clean golf ball or a couple of large pebbles in the ordinary bowl, so he has to eat around them. Baxter went from a hoover to a grazer on that alone.

The one caution I'd add from our own history: the year we put Baxter's bolting down to speed, the vet eventually found a broken tooth at the back that he'd been eating round. Slowing the meal helped, but the tooth was why he'd stopped chewing in the first place. A look in the mouth is cheap.

Update, four weeks on. Maze bowl, dinner split into four goes across the day, and Alfie eats in the kitchen with the door shut while the kitten eats in the hall. One pile on the mat in that whole time, and it was the day I got lazy and gave him the whole lot at once. Vet gave him a once over at the kitten's booster appointment, mouth fine, weight fine, "keep doing that." Slightly annoyed it was this simple.