I’ve been a mostly-feline, holistic veterinarian for more than 30 years, and one of the safest and most useful tools I’ve ever found is Vaseline®. I give it to cats orally for hairballs and constipation; personally, I use it as “chapstick” because I’m often in the dry Arizona desert or equally arid Colorado. It can also be used as a salve for superficial burns, scrapes, and cuts.
For dogs in snowy climates, rub Vaseline on their paw pads so snow and ice won’t stick, and to help maintain healthy moisture levels. (You can do this for cats, too—if you leash-walk them or their catio is exposed to the elements—because surely you’re not just letting your cat roam!)
Vaseline (or its liquid equivalent, mineral oil) is an ingredient in many cosmetics, lotions, moisturizers, and other products most people never think twice about. What do you think we were all doing in the surfer era when we slathered baby oil all over ourselves at the beach? Yup—that’s the same stuff!
“Yuck–It’s Petroleum!”
I get a lot of pushback whenever I recommend giving a cat Vaseline. A “blech!” face is usually the first response, followed by “It’s made from petroleum!” or “It’s gross! It’s unnatural!” My clients want holistic medicine—surely I would never say such a thing!
We think of crude petroleum as a nasty, dirty, smelly, oily, toxic substance. And it is. Maybe you’re old enough to remember the intro to The Beverly Hillbillies, where a fountain of thick, black goop blasts up from the ground when Jed Clampett shoots at a rabbit! When we lived in Huntington Beach, there were oil rigs in backyards. My cats were always getting into it, and the bathing process to get it off was unpleasant for everyone!
But let’s think about petroleum. It’s made from fossils: dead animals (zooplankton), plants (phytoplankton), algae, and microbes that died millions of years ago. There’s nothing unnatural about that.
When I was young and not paying much attention, I’d sometimes find what used to be a bag of lettuce at the back of the fridge. It had turned into a bag of brown water. Living cells contain within them the means (lysosomes) to break themselves down. With enough time and pressure, would that former lettuce have become crude oil? It certainly looked like the beginnings of it!
From Fossils to Felines
Carbon and hydrogen are the basic building blocks of all life on Earth. We and our cats are mostly carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen—or, as the unfriendly aliens on Star Trek once called humans, “ugly bags of mostly water.”
Of course, the carbon and hydrogen in those plants and animals have been recombined by vast heat and pressure over the millennia into something quite different. The atoms have been broken down and reassembled into long hydrocarbon chains that can perform many functions, depending on how they’re processed. Petroleum can be refined into gasoline, kerosene, or propane (campers rejoice!), or transformed into fertilizer, fabrics (unless you completely eschew synthetics, you’re probably wearing some now!), plastics, furniture, asphalt, and much more.
Vaseline, or petroleum jelly, is a waxy byproduct of oil production. In the 1850s, a chemist named Robert Chesebrough noticed oil workers treating their cuts and burns with a waxy substance that built up on the rigs. He purified it, tested it, and created Vaseline.
Why Vaseline Works–Safely–for Cats
Vaseline is completely inert in the body—meaning it has no chemical or biological effect. Petroleum jelly is a very long, very stable chain of about 25 carbons. This structure cannot be metabolized by the body. Technically, it’s a wax, not an oil. And that’s exactly why it’s so useful for cats!
Vaseline works for hairballs and constipation because it melts and surrounds whatever is in the digestive tract. It greases, coats, and “escorts” the digestive contents all the way down and out the correct exit. It’s not digested, broken down, or absorbed; every bit of it is excreted with the stool or hair in the exact same form it went in.
Many people want to use a different kind of oil, like coconut or olive. But edible oils are digested in the small intestine and never make it to the colon, where the constipated stool resides. They may help a little, but they don’t finish the job.
I personally recommend the Vaseline brand because it is highly purified and contains no additives. I don’t trust cheap generics, which may contain unwanted contaminants. My cats—nearly all of whom liked it and voluntarily licked it off my finger—completely rejected anything other than the brand name!
Safety and Dosing
The digestive tract, from mouth to anus, is technically “outside” the body. Nothing passes from the inside of that tube to the bloodstream without passing through multiple defenses. The GI lining is actually pretty tough, when you consider what animals put through it: fur, bones, grasses, seeds, baby socks, stuffed toys, and other interesting items (especially puppies, who eat everything—and mostly live to tell the tale!). So even when we’re talking about “feeding” Vaseline to cats–it’s really still a topical application. It won’t be absorbed.
Is there any potential harm from Vaseline? Sure—but as with so many things (including water and oxygen), “the dose makes the poison.” Vaseline is a mild laxative, so in large doses it could cause diarrhea. I’ve never seen this. In fact, my cat Spirit loved Vaseline and would eat as much as I would give her. She got a good ¼ to ½ teaspoon of Vaseline—which she (and my other cats) happily licked off my finger—every day for her whole 20+ years. In the case of a painfully constipated cat, that can only be a good thing!
(Of course, persistent or chronic constipation must be evaluated by your veterinarian! See this article for much more about this condition. Vaseline is a great first-aid tool, but not meant to work alone long-term.)
To give Vaseline to a cat who’s not crazy about the taste, get a dab (say ⅛ to ¼ teaspoon) on your finger and smush it into the corner of their mouth—between the teeth or wiped into the cheek. It can’t be spit out. They have to swallow it—and at that point, it’s doing its good work! Do not force it straight down the throat like food or liquid, as there’s a chance of aspiration. Make sure it’s stuck to the mucous membranes of the mouth.
Give Vaseline separated from meals by at least an hour. Otherwise the coating effect will prevent absorption of the nutrients from food.
In Conclusion…
Please don’t be afraid of Vaseline! It has saved many kitty lives for me—and given aid and comfort to a whole lot of older cats whose digestion isn’t quite what it once was.
If you don’t believe me (and seriously, you should always double-check everything you read on the internet—I do!), here’s an article from Catster, fact-checked by a veterinarian, with more information:
Can Cats Eat Vaseline? – Catster