MzDiz
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- Joined
- Sep 10, 2005
- Messages
- 1,886
This is a public service announcement. My cat, Patches, began vomiting early last week. At first I didn't think anything of it, since she's fruffy and hairbally. That is, until she was vomiting bile, stopped eating, and resolved to lay on the basement floor all day and night. I took her to the vet on Thursday, where she received all sorts of tests and x-rays and what not, resulting in exploratory surgery.
Long story short, there was a piece of string (ok, if you're eating, put down your food, it gets gross from here) going from her stomach to her rectum. When her bowels moved, it essentially sawed her intestines back and forth across the string and had accordioned and perforated her bowel. The doctor had to remove twelve inches of her small intestine and make several other incisions in her digestive tract to remove the string.
She's home now, wrapped in bandage, isolated in the bathroom. I have been slowly trying to feed her baby food through a syringe. She lost a pound, which in an eight pound cat is quite a lot. She looks terrible. I'm lucky to have her here with me still.
Here's the public service announcement part. Don't let your cat eat string! Patches was stealing mine from my sewing machine when I left it out unattended for a few minutes at a time. I'd come back from the bathroom and she'd be there munching on it. I had always heard how dangerous it was, but never thought she'd got a hold of enough, the sneaky thing. When I was browsing the web, looking for information about cats that do this, I saw all these adoption sites that listed a cat's hobby as string eating. Not good.
By the way, I have the string in a ziploc bag. I paid $1300 to get that string, I'm keeping it. I'll stare at it when we're not at Disney World because my cat needed to eat thread.
Long story short, there was a piece of string (ok, if you're eating, put down your food, it gets gross from here) going from her stomach to her rectum. When her bowels moved, it essentially sawed her intestines back and forth across the string and had accordioned and perforated her bowel. The doctor had to remove twelve inches of her small intestine and make several other incisions in her digestive tract to remove the string.
She's home now, wrapped in bandage, isolated in the bathroom. I have been slowly trying to feed her baby food through a syringe. She lost a pound, which in an eight pound cat is quite a lot. She looks terrible. I'm lucky to have her here with me still.
Here's the public service announcement part. Don't let your cat eat string! Patches was stealing mine from my sewing machine when I left it out unattended for a few minutes at a time. I'd come back from the bathroom and she'd be there munching on it. I had always heard how dangerous it was, but never thought she'd got a hold of enough, the sneaky thing. When I was browsing the web, looking for information about cats that do this, I saw all these adoption sites that listed a cat's hobby as string eating. Not good.
By the way, I have the string in a ziploc bag. I paid $1300 to get that string, I'm keeping it. I'll stare at it when we're not at Disney World because my cat needed to eat thread.
At least she's purring again, I hadn't heard her purr in months. It's nice to have a little of her normal self back. 
I frequently shop at Chico's. They always try to tie the handles of the shopping bags with multiple pieces of ribbon. I always have to say no ribbon, he loves it! ALso loves to eat wooden pencils, chap stick, you name it. Tou'd think my girls would learn. His favorite thing is to shop in older DD11's purse
