Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Cats Eating Nasty Stuff

Dennis left a link to this story in his comments on hairball meds.

George ate a piece of dental floss once. I saw the end of it hanging out of his mouth; he swallowed it before I could nab him. I called the vet, who mentioned the danger of bowel perforation, but then said "just check his stools and if it isn't there in two days, bring him in."

I went through a lot of disposable gloves over the next two days; I picked up each turd and mashed it to see if there was floss in it. About 18 hours after he had eaten the floss, he crapped out a turd that had the entire mass of floss wadded up in it.

I have never been so happy, before or since, to have squished a turn between my fingers!

6 comments:

  1. Shayna ate one of the Mrs.' knee-high pantyhose when she was a puppy. 8 hours later, it came out (I watched her like a hawk) and I swear, mixed with every thing else, it looked like a chain of sausage links. I was laughing my ass off so hard the neighbors looked at me more strangely than they usually do.

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  2. The Mighty Fang has an obsession for rubber bands. I have to be very careful to stash them away, because if I do not, he ends up with a very rubbery stool. On a side note, I went to get the spare inner tube for my bicycle out of where I had it stashed, unfolded it and... uhm. That inner tube was not going anywhere. TMF had not only chewed holes in it, but *eaten* pieces of it to the point where it was unpatchable, as in, it was in two pieces and was now a spare inner *hose* rather than a *tube*!

    And of course there's his cleaning up Mencken's cat barf but we already talked about that. Luckily TMF has the constitution of an ox (and weighs not much less, he's the 18 pounder). So far, no harm done...

    -Badtux the Cat-owned Penguin

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  3. Had a cat eat a piece of floss too, caught her running around and rubbing on the carpet to get it out of her ass, she wasn't happy to have me gently pull the last 5 inches out. Reminded me of one of those toy cars with the ripcord to make them go.

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  4. HMMM.
    I wonder if ya tied a piece of SOS pad every few inches if ya couldn't give it a good yank and clean out hairballs and all, at one time?

    Here Kitty kitty!

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  5. We had a similar experiences as Handbasket, but it was with curling ribbon like you use for gifts. Nothing like having to gently tug red poo covered ribbon from an angry cat's ass.

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  6. What can happen with pieces of string is that they become a linear foreign body. I have seen them caught under the tongue of a cat, with the trailing part down into the small intestine. If one pulls, one MUST do it very gently because in the small gut, the string causes plication, or "accordion pleating" of the intestine. When that happens, it is quite possible to cut through significant lengths of intestine. Surgically removing linear foreign bodies sometimes requires several incisions into the intestine. These linear foreign bodies can indeed, be bad news. On the other hand, I have seen some of the most bizarre things pass. During my junior year in veterinary school, a Labrador was presented that had swallowed TWO rocks, rather oblong in shape and about the size of a goose egg. One passed. The other had to be surgically removed. I once saw a treble fish hook pass through a dog's intestine with no problems occurring.

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