Editorial · PetScored desk · June 10, 2026

Do hairball remedies work for cats?

If your cat keeps coughing up hairballs and you are standing in the aisle deciding what to buy, here is the short version. The aisle has two traditions. One is a tube of malt-flavored petroleum jelly, a thick lubricant, that cats have been licking for decades. The other is fiber. Only one of them has actually been tested in cats, and it is not the one most people reach for.

By the PetScored Editorial Team. Reading time: 6 minutes.

Bottom line

If you want the one that has been studied, reach for fiber: it is the only hairball approach with controlled cat evidence behind it. A randomized trial found that a specific fiber reduced trichobezoars (the medical name for hairballs) in a dose-dependent way, while plain cellulose did not, and a second controlled study found psyllium plus higher dietary fiber increased fecal hair excretion in long-haired cats by 81 to 113 percent. In plainer terms, more of the swallowed hair leaves in the litter box instead of coming back up. The classic petroleum-jelly gels, by contrast, have no controlled efficacy trial in cats at all: a peer-reviewed review notes that none of the commonly recommended preventive strategies have been studied. The gel mechanism is plausible and the gels are low-risk, but plausible-and-untested is exactly how our rubric scores them. That is why a fiber product outscores a lubricant gel here: one has trial support, the other has tradition.

What you are actually dealing with

First, what is happening inside your cat. A hairball is a trichobezoar: a wad of swallowed hair that did not pass through the gut and gets vomited back up. Your cat grooms constantly, so swallowing some hair is completely normal. What a hairball remedy is trying to do is move that hair the right direction, through the digestive tract and out the back end, instead of up the front. There are two ways to attempt that, and they rest on very different amounts of evidence.

Why fiber is the safer bet

Fiber is the approach with actual trials behind it, which is why we would point you there first. Loureiro and colleagues ran a randomized study and found that sugarcane fiber produced a dose-dependent reduction in trichobezoar excretion, while plain cellulose did not, which tells you the effect is specific to the type of fiber rather than just bulk (Loureiro 2014, PMID 26101589). Weber and colleagues then ran a controlled crossover study and found that psyllium combined with higher dietary fiber increased fecal hair excretion in long-haired cats by roughly 81 to 113 percent compared with a low-fiber diet (Weber 2015, PMID 29067172). For you, that means the same thing both times: more hair leaving in the stool is less hair available to come back up as a hairball.

Set your expectations, though, because two honest caveats keep this from being a miracle. The studies measured fecal hair, a surrogate for hairballs rather than a direct count of vomited ones, and the clearest effect showed up in long-haired cats, who simply have the most hair to move. So the effect is real. It is also modest.

Why the gel earns the side-eye

The petroleum-jelly lubricant gel is the older tradition, and it is the one the evidence cannot vouch for. A peer-reviewed review of feline hairballs concluded that no studies have evaluated the commonly recommended preventive strategies, the malt and petroleum-jelly gels included (Cannon 2013, PMID 23254238). The idea behind it, that a slick gut lets hair slide through, is reasonable, and the product is low-risk, so you are unlikely to harm your cat by trying it. But reasonable-and-low-risk is not the same as tested. After decades on the shelf there is still no controlled trial showing the gels actually reduce hairballs in cats.

The part worth reading twice

Before you buy anything, the Cannon review adds a caution worth more than any product on the shelf: frequent hairballs, especially in a short-haired cat, can be a sign of an underlying skin or gastrointestinal problem rather than just a grooming nuisance. Over-grooming from itchy skin puts more hair in the gut; a gut motility problem keeps it there. So if your cat is bringing up hairballs often, the highest-value move is not a bigger scoop of gel. It is a veterinary look for the cause.

How this shows up in the scores

When you look at our hairball list, the ranking comes out exactly as the evidence would predict. A psyllium-based fiber capsule sits on the one approach with controlled trials, so its Evidence Quality score is the best in the category, and it lands in our Mixed band. Why not higher? Because the trials raised total dietary fiber to 11 to 15 percent of the diet, and a single small capsule is far less than that, so we cannot confirm a daily dose delivers a studied-effective amount, and we flag its value as approximate. The traditional petroleum-jelly gel scores below it, in our lowest band, because its Evidence Quality rests on tradition rather than a trial, and its “eliminate and prevent” claim runs ahead of what the evidence actually shows.

And here is the unglamorous part you can do tonight, free: the most effective hairball tool needs no product at all. Regular brushing removes the loose hair before your cat ever swallows it. So if you want a shopping rule, it is this. Fiber is the evidence-backed supplement, the gel is the tradition, and a cat with frequent hairballs deserves a vet visit before either.

- The PetScored desk. See how we tier evidence in the supplements methodology, and the scored hairball products on the Vetasyl and Laxatone scorecards.