Have not been grooming him for some months coz of a wrist trouble. Whenever he skip breakfast, I know a hairball is coming up. He skipped breakfast again ytd, so I knew he will come up with a hairball in 1 to 2 days' time. This morning, he started getting so hungry, so...he must have threw up his hairball.
Looked around, didn't see any hairball, but his appetite was good, HE MUST HAVE THREW UP HIS HAIRBALL. Looked again, lol...true enough. He covered it up with 3 toys this time, but this time its more gross, its food + hairball.
Its not the 1st time he cover up, but thank goodness he only cover up his hairball not vomitus. I have always thought he isn't smart, but I was wrong, he knew he needed 3 toys to cover up if one isn't enough, lol....he is pretty smart after all.
My cats never cover up their hairballs or vomit. They have however hacked them up under a bed or behind the couch so I don't find them until I am cleaning those places. I usually can tell by their behavior also so I look for them. Most times they are in clear view in the middle of the floor. Nothing quite like waking up and stepping in some vomit first thing in the morning, ewwww..
It's instinctive for a cat to cover up excrement and urine so, while problems in this area abound, most cats do, most always, cover up whatever they deposit into the litter box. It's not so common for a cat to cover up vomitus or expelled hairballs, but it's not unknown.
I have three cats. One of them is a 25 year-old who is not in the best of health, which might be expected at her age. Lydia doesn't always make it to the litter box, although I think she tries. Most of the messes are in the same room as the litter box, or somewhere on the way from the bed where she normally sleeps and the litter box. But even when she was younger, she wouldn't always cover her messes. She'd just walk away, and her sister would cover up for her.
My two year-old (Ella) tells me whenever Lydia has left a mess. She'll get my attention and then lead me to it, in the rare event that I haven't already smelled it, and then make digging motions next to it. She will have already tried her best to cover it up with whatever bits of cat litter might have been thrown from the litter boxes. I can always see that she had scraped everything she could find over there, trying to cover the mess that Lydia has left.
As for vomitus, my cats will sometimes vomit in the litter box, seemingly aware that it is a mess that should probably be disposed of properly, but most often they'll throw up wherever they are, and not cover it up.
My kitty will attempt to cover up her vomit, including hair balls, but what she ends up doing is just scratching at the carpet. She will cast her eyes up at me, as if to say, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make a mess." Then she'll stand there and watch guiltily as I clean it up. I always try to give her as much comfort as I can, because I know she's not being deliberately messy. On the other hand, my mom had a cat years ago, who would purposefully heave for ten minutes until he finally made something come up. He would always do this while standing on the belongings or bed of whomever he was currently mad at. It was so obviously an act of retaliation that we finally had to banish that cat from all of the bedrooms. After that, he would throw up on the couch or living room chairs. He was so deliberate about it that we knew he wasn't really sick, but just angry about something. He was an odd cat anyway, who suffered from Pica as a kitten and would eat anything, including wood and paint. In his elderly years he developed seizures from the lead poisoning, but during the in-between years we had to clean up a lot of retaliatory vomit from that cat. I've never known a cat since then who threw up deliberately, but every cat I've had has always tried to clean up or hide the mess after. Some cats will even attempt to re-eat the vomit, something that dogs are well-known for doing. I try to stop cats from doing that if I can catch them in time. If possible, I like to clean up the vomit right away, usually I'm going for the cleaning materials as soon as I hear retching sounds. That way, the mess doesn't get eaten again, and it also doesn't dry right into the carpeting. I have never had a cat who tried to hide the mess with his toys, but I have had a few messes that landed directly ON the cat toys. Basically, it lands wherever the cat happens to be when he gets sick, and then he'll walk a few paces away and do it again. That's the traditional cat technique. They don't like to throw up in the same place twice, apparently.
I've had several cats throughout my lifetime and I've never had one that covered up vomit or hairballs. Now when it comes to covering up what they've left in the litter box, one of my cats doesn't even do that. When I'm cleaning the litter box I always know when he has gone to the bathroom because it will be sitting right on top in plain view. A different cat that I have will keep covering for the longest time, even after it's buried in cat litter. Sometimes I'll say his name and then tell him that he's done a good job, just so he will stop covering. He really works at it too, because cat litter will be flying out of the box. When this same cat vomits, it scares him. He will first howl, then vomit and then run away from it. Cats are so funny and they all have such different personalities and quirks.
Yes, I've stepped on a hairball first thing in the morning too and it's not a good feeling, especially when I'm not fully awake yet and haven't even had my coffee.
