The cat who ate string

As I sat down to write this column, which I’d intended as a useful guide to anxiety-free travel while your cats are left at home, I looked up from my screen and saw my cat Saffy swallowing a clump of thin cotton thread.

As with disasters in the movies it seemed to happen in slow motion: the round tri-colored cat swallowing the clump of string while her human reached across the table with her, mouth a perfect circle screaming “Nooooooo!” When I spotted her two inches of thread were sticking out of her mouth. I hesitated to pull it out lest I hurt the cat. I recalled a report about torturers forcing prisoners to swallow a length of cloth, and then yanking it out, causing horrible pain. 

While I hesitated, the string disappeared into Saffy’s mouth. She licked her chops and said, “I just swallowed five feet of string!” Telepathically of course, I’m not that crazy.

How she came by the string is my fault. I have a thin cotton blanket that is rapidly unraveling so I cut off the loose thread and gave it to Saffy to play with. Cats, as you may know, plotz with joy when string is dangled before them, I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the genetic memory of having caught some prey, ripping out its long intestines, and slurping it up like spaghetti. I expected her to play with it, not eat it. Thus began a long night of string-related anxiety.

I wanted to call the vet, but it was very late and I knew she would ask me how Saffy was behaving. The blasted cat seemed perfectly normal. Then the vet would laugh at the neurotic human, as she usually does. 

Besides, Saffy had eaten similar items — a rubber band, a small hairband — and showed no ill effects. The rubber band she pooped out whole — I saw it in the litterbox. The hairband she threw up. Why Saffy has an appetite for string-like objects, I have no idea. She is the smallest cat in the household, but the most ferocious — when there are visitors she sits next to me, glaring at them. 

Still, five feet of balled-up string is a worrisome aperitif. I say aperitif because after eating it, she trotted to her dish and ate some kibble. I imagined the string getting tangled up in her internal organs and went into agonies. Would the cotton be dissolved by her stomach acids? Should I make her throw up?

So I consulted Google and learned that if you are in a panic, googling will make it worse. According to About.com,  the technical term for the string my cat ate is “linear foreign body.” The eating of odd things by cats is a condition called pica and the reasons for it may include “stress, boredom, attention-seeking behavior, play behavior, or the simple fact that the item tastes/smells good to the cat.” The consulting veterinarian went on to say that “The intestines can become blocked or stressed/pulled/torn as the string bunches up and binds during intestinal peristalsis.” This was not presented as a worst-case scenario but an inevitable result.

Aaaaaaa! I observed Saffy for the symptoms listed: vomiting, anorexia, straining to defecate, abdominal pain, fever, depression, dehydration. Nada, but perhaps it was too soon. “Are you alright?” I asked her. “Feverish? Constipated? Maybe depressed?” The look my cat gave me said, “What the hell’s the matter with you?” in the exact intonation of Tony Soprano. 

Howstuffworks.com recommended checking to see if there was string coming out of the cat’s mouth or butt, then gently pulling it. What!? What if some vital organ gets dragged out with the string? Fortunately I didn’t have to worry about this — there was no string coming out of Saffy, who was sitting in front of the TV watching a DVD of Last Year At Marienbad and occasionally swatting the screen. This is exactly how I behave when I try to watch Last Year At Marienbad — did it mean the cat was alright, or did she merely share her human’s tastes?

Just about the only “expert” who did not recommend immediate surgery was one of the answerers in Yahoo Answers. In discussing a similar case, she or he said the string-eating cat should be fine; the string could get caught in the cat’s intestines but this was unlikely. The other answerers offered variations on “The vet! Now!” Someone said she had spent US$2,200 to have a piece of string surgically removed from her cat’s intestines.

How I managed to sleep that night I have no idea. The following morning Saffy showed no symptoms whatsoever — she ate her breakfast, then used the litterbox. I decided the cat was in perfect health and went off to my lunch meeting. When I got home four hours later, I saw that Saffy had passed the string. 

If you are eating, stop reading this right now.

The string had come out — in sections. As far as I could tell, Saffy had started in the litterbox, grown impatient, and walked around the house. Leaving hard solid segments all over the place. Grumbling, I took out the cleaning materials and started swabbing my house.

Saffy watched me cleaning and cursing. “What are you complaining about?” she asked via telepathy. “I just saved you two thousand dollars.”

Conclusion: String may be harmful to cats, but it can cause anxiety and nervous breakdowns in their humans.