Sometimes it's hard to decide which gift from your cat is your favorite. Is it the half-eaten beetle, the pool of vomit, or the hairballs?

Like it or not, most cat owners contend with hairballs at some point: Domestic cats spend up to half their waking hours grooming themselves.

But, we wondered, does the same thing happen to wildcats? (Read about surprising things you never knew about your cat.)

Here Comes the Groom

All cat species, wild or not, get hairballs, Letitia Fanucchi, an animal behaviorist at Washington State University, says via email. Grooming is not only soothing for domestic cats, it keeps them smooth and sleek. "They need to be sneaky and undetectable by prey, so keeping themselves clean helps."

But there's literally a catch.

"When cats groom, their bristle-like tongue catches a lot of hair and they swallow it, but hair is not digestible." So, before long, the feline will either cough, vomit, or poop out the hairball—a behavior that happens in all cats, Fanucchi says.

Wildcats also have tongue bristles, called papillae, which are particularly useful in the wild. "One theory for the bristles is that they help to scrape meat off bones and position meat in their mouth," says Natalia Borrego, a research associate at the University of Minnesota Lion Center.

View Images Domestic cats spend most of their waking hours grooming, a soothing activity. Photograph by Stephen Alvarez, Nat Geo Image Collection

But she's never known a lion, in or out of captivity, to cough up a hairball, "though physiologically there's no reason they wouldn't get them," she says via email.

Hairballs could be a sign of some underlying gastrointestinal problem, like inflammatory bowel syndrome, says Matthew Johnston, an associate professor at Colorado State University's Veterinary Teaching Hospital.

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It's also possible that some commercial pet foods trigger such digestive conditions, although that's a controversial topic, Johnston says.

Lions, Tigers, and Hairs

Whatever the cause, even though cats of all sizes groom themselves the same way, hairballs are "not a normal thing in big cats," captive or not, he notes.

Smaller wildcats in captivity, such as servals or ocelots, are often fed a domestic cat-like diet, while big cats such as jaguars and leopards get meat and animal carcasses. This may be why small cats occasionally vomit up hairballs, says Johnston. (Related: "Out of the Shadows, the Wildcats You've Never Seen.")

View Images A serval, a type of wildcat native to Africa. Photograph by Joel Sartore, National Geographic Photo Ark

But there are a few cases of captive big cats suffering from hairballs.

When a tiger at Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation Center in Clearwater, Florida, began to show symptoms of appetite loss and sluggishness, vets discovered he had a four-pound hairball—which was also surgically removed, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

View Images A wild ocelot stalks the forests of Belize. Photograph by Frans Lanting, Nat Geo Image Collection

Royal Behavior

"Lions, tigers, leopards, and jaguars all have a modified voice box that includes a ligament that enables them to roar and make that very loud, deep sound," she adds.

After all, the king of beasts would never be caught doing anything as undignified as coughing up a hairball.