The cat came out and immediately started making a ‘macking’ noise. I checked to see if he was OK, and it looked like he was playing with a ribbon. See, I’d had a sweater cleaned and the put a 1/4" ribbon about 2-1/2 feet long around it. (Nice touch, I suppose, but completely useless.) The cat has been playing with it for a few days. He was chewing on it for about a minute, and I didn’t think anything of it.
Then he wandered off and I started hearing the horking sound. I got up in the hopes I could put something down to catch his vomit, but roomie beat me to him. She’s looking at the hork and says, ‘What is that?*’ As I approached I thought it was a hair-ball – but she knows what those are. Turns out the cat had eaten all but about six inches of the ribbon in about a minute, and then threw it up.
What a dope!
No more thin ribbons for Horky.
About 20 years ago I learned that it was fun to play with ribbons or string with the cat, but always put them away afterwards.
I heard the same noise coming from her, and found about a foot of shoelace (her toy of choice that week) sticking out of her mouth. I held it without pulling while she took about 15 minutes horking the rest out. Apparently cats’ esophagus (esophagii?) don’t let them hork out stringy things well, and in fact cats can easily choke on that kind of thing.
Ribbon or string should never be left unattended where a cat can get them. Because their tongues are barbed once they start licking it they can’t stop; they have to swallow it. If they don’t hork it up it can cause serious and sometimes fatal problems in the intestinal tract,
I guess it’s close enough to Christmas to remind everyone who has cats - be really careful if you use long strands of tinsel; if swallowed it, too, can cause serious and sometimes fatal intestinal problems.
This reminds me of a story a friend of mine told me about six months after adopting her dog, Ernie. He was crazy energetic, and she was getting exhausted by it. I guess he’d eat anything and everything, and would try to tear up furniture and stuff. Anyway, she said she was in her bedroom and realized she hadn’t heard Ernie in a few minutes. She went out to the living room only to see a bright piece of fabric coming out of Ernie’s butt. She said, “I kept pulling and pulling, and it just kept coming out!”
Turns out, it was one of my friend’s long, broomstick skirts! Ernie ate the whole thing. That dog is such a character.