Cat Symptom Diary: 6 Columns, 14 Days, 3 Call Lines

A symptom diary works when it has exactly 6 columns and 1 line per event: date and clock time, count, volume, minutes after eating, trigger, and what you did. Fill it during the event, not at night from memory, and review 14 days at a time. Two pages of entries will answer the 3 questions a vet asks first, and 3 numeric thresholds decide whether the next step is a phone call, a 48-hour wait, or the car.

Six columns, one line, written during the event

Diaries fail for a boring reason: they are filled in later. A cat that vomits at 04:20 is remembered at 09:00 as maybe twice, maybe once. The fix is a pad taped inside a kitchen cupboard door with 6 fixed columns, and 1 rule: write the line before you clean up. The whole entry takes 40 seconds, and the sheet is the difference between a vague history and a usable one at the appointment 10 days later.

The 6 columns and the rule for each

Date	Count	Volume (ml)	Minutes after food	Trigger	Action taken
03-02 04:20	1	20	420	empty stomach overnight	refilled bowl, watched
03-02 17:05	2	15	15	new food day 2	photo, no change
03-03 06:10	1	40	480	hairball, 6 cm	brushed 10 min
03-04 18:30	3	10	20	new food day 4	stopped new food
03-05 07:00	0	0	0	back to old food	ate 35 g
03-06 03:40	1	25	390	empty stomach	late meal 22:00
03-07 08:15	0	0	0	late meal helped	continued 4 days

Column 1 is date plus clock time to the minute, because 04:00 and 18:00 are different diseases in practice. Column 2 is the count of separate events, not of heaves; 3 heaves in 60 seconds are 1 event with 3 retches noted in brackets. Column 3 is volume in ml, estimated against a spoon or a saucer, plus hairball length in cm. Column 4 is minutes from the last meal, which is why the diary needs feeding times on the same sheet. Column 5 is the only column that looks backwards: food changed in the last 72 hours, a plant chewed, a 2 a.m. empty stomach, new litter, a visitor, a move. Column 6 is what you did and what happened within 30 minutes, because a response is data too.

Measuring volume without a syringe

Estimates are fine if the unit is fixed. A teaspoon is 5 ml, a tablespoon is 15 ml, a sauce saucer holds 30 to 40 ml, and a dinner plate puddle is 60 ml or more. Photograph the puddle next to a coin once per week and stop estimating from memory. Hairballs go in cm, not adjectives: 2 cm is a tuft, 8 cm is worth a note. Foam and bile are recorded as 0 ml with a word, since a 0 in the volume column still counts as an event and changes the pattern.

Counting rules that keep the numbers honest

Count what came out, not what you noticed. A cat that vomits 3 times in 1 hour is 3 events in 1 episode, and the pair of numbers is what a vet wants. A hairball counts in the same column as vomit but gets a note, because 2 hairballs a month is ordinary in a long-haired cat and 2 a week is a reason to talk about grooming and hydration. A retch with nothing produced is still an entry. Diarrhea is scored 1 to 5, where 1 is formed and 5 is water, and 3 or more in a day gets a photo.

Triggers: the 4 that explain most weeks

Food is first: a diet change shows up within 72 hours, and a diary that lists day 1 to day 7 of a new food turns a guess into a decision. Empty stomach is second: bile or foam before breakfast in a cat fed once a day often tracks a 14 to 16 hour gap, which is why a 22:00 meal changes the 04:00 line. Plants and string are third, and the column records what was chewed, not what you suspect. Stress is fourth: a visitor, a move, a new cat, a 3-day absence, all worth 1 word in the trigger column and a note in the margin.

Three lines that turn entries into a decision

Line 1: 3 or more vomits in 24 hours, or any vomit with blood. Line 2: 2 or more events a week for 2 straight weeks, which is the pattern that moves a cat from wait-and-see to a workup. Line 3: 24 hours with no food, or 12 hours with no water, or a weight drop of 5 percent across 30 days. A kitten under 6 months, a cat with a known heart condition, or a cat that stops grooming crosses every line faster, so use 12 hours instead of 24. Cross 1 line, call the clinic and read the numbers; cross 2, or add lethargy, and go in.

The 10-second video and the 3 numbers to quote

A phone clip of the event is worth more than a paragraph. Film 10 seconds from the side, in daylight, with the cat on the floor, and keep it with the same date as the line. On the phone, quote 3 numbers in this order: events in the last 24 hours, days since the pattern started, and current weight. That is 15 seconds of speech, and it gets a triage decision instead of a question about appetite. Bring 2 pages of the diary, not 6: the last 14 days plus the earliest week that had a problem.

What a diary cannot tell you

A sheet of numbers does not identify a cause. Vomiting in cats maps onto food intolerance, hairballs, parasites, gastritis, pancreatitis, thyroid disease, kidney disease and intestinal lymphoma, and the same 3 lines can fit 4 of them. The diary shortens the workup and stops repeat questions; it does not replace an exam, a weight trend and blood work. If the cat is losing weight while eating normally, the diary is a supporting document, not the answer.

Start with 5 moves tonight

Tape a 6-column pad on the cupboard door and write the header row in ink.
Add feeding times to the top of the page, in 24-hour clock.
Put a teaspoon and a saucer next to the pad as volume references.
Set a 14-day review on the calendar, and a 48-hour recheck after any crossed line.
Keep 1 photo folder named by date, so the video and the line stay together.

Two weeks of 40-second entries gives a vet a pattern that no 10-minute conversation can produce. The cost is a pad and a pen; the return is fewer repeat visits, fewer repeat tests, and a faster answer on the day it matters.

Frequently asked

Do I need to log every day, or only on bad days?

Only on days with an event, plus 1 weekly line for weight and appetite. A full calendar of zeros is hard to keep and hides the pattern. Blank days are still data: a page with 2 entries in 14 days tells a vet the problem is intermittent, while 9 entries in 14 days says something changed and stayed changed.

My estimate of the volume will be wrong. Does that ruin the sheet?

No, as long as the unit stays fixed. A teaspoon is 5 ml, a tablespoon 15 ml and a saucer 30 to 40 ml, and the trend matters more than the exact figure. Photograph the puddle beside a coin once a week and the estimates stay honest. A vet reads 15 ml against 40 ml as a different picture even with 20 percent error.

How long should I keep old diary pages?

Keep 3 months of pages, and keep the 2 worst weeks permanently in the health folder. A pattern that repeats every 8 to 12 weeks is easy to miss if each episode is thrown away after a week. Bring the last 14 days to an appointment and leave the rest at home unless the vet asks for a longer window.