So sometime this morning my cat swatted my diamond earrings off my nightstand. I found one, but have combed the entire apartment and haven’t seen the other, and I’m afraid he may have eaten it. They’re very small, not the dangle kind, so I’m not super worried that he’ll be hurt right now. He’s acting normal, but if anything changes he’s getting rushed to the vet. How long does it take for something to completely pass through a cat? When should I start combing the litter box?
It is hard to tell with my cat, he always eats the same thing. When he was a kitten, I would give him a can of cat food (instead of the dry) about once every 3 weeks. He would snarf the hole can immediately, regardless of whether he had eaten the dry recently or not. I think about the soonest I would notice a ‘odoriferous’ dooky would be in the 6 to 8 hour range. (His stinky doots is why he does not get canned cat food anymore, btw).
I would check all doots at your house till the earring turns up.
(the cat does get a treat once in a while, canned chicken broth makes the cat frantic! He snorts and prances and howls if he sees me with the correct can near the can opener)
He only eats dry food, and I’ve been checking all day with no result 
I’m not 100% sure he ate it, but we’ve literally gone from one room to the next with flashlights moving every piece of furniture and still haven’t found it. When he give him treats, we always throw the treat so he gets to have a game out of finding it, but now every time we drop something that makes a similar sound he goes for it thinking it’s a treat, and I’m scared this is what happened with the earring.
Might not hurt to sift all the litter. The cat may have batted the earring into the litter box, and then it was buried in his next BM.
We had a cat back in the 80s that would occasionally bury a ball point pen or a pencil in the litter box. Just another cat oddity, we never figured out why he did it.
My sister has a cat that re-buries the other cats dookies if they don’t do it correctly. They all have their own little peculiarities, don’t they?
I expected to find some kind of Schrödinger’s Corollary to Xeno’s Paradox question. Boy, was I wrong.
The best way to use a flashlight to find a small object on the floor is to hold the beam parallel to the floor in a semi-darkened room and look for the shadow. It stands out better than the object itself.
Any treasures found yet?
All animals and people are different as far as how quickly they digest food. Usually 24 hours or less for normal motility, but it could be up to 48 hours. I would think you’d find something within 2 days, and if kitty is having a problem you would also see symptoms by that time as well. (vomiting, diarrhea, inappetance)
Nothing yet
It makes me hopeful that maybe he didn’t eat it, but if he didn’t then I have no idea where the thing is. We looked so carefully that him eating it was the only place it could be, but nothings turned up yet. A few hours after we thought maybe he ate it, we went ahead and cleaned the litter box out so we’d have a fresh start on it, and I’m afraid we may have thrown it away with that
And my fiance keeps telling me that it’ll be ok, he’ll get me another pair of earrings, but those were the first birthday present he ever got me, and they meant alot to me.
If it doesn’t turn up, have the diamond from the remaining stud reset into something. That way it’s still useful, and you can enjoy it.
I’ll probably end up doing that, and it’s actually three diamond that hang in a rain drop type shape, so I’m sure there’s something that could be done with them.
I was playing around with the cat just now showing him the found earring and telling him to go fetch me the other, when I accidentally dropped it and he lunged for it and tried to eat it. So there’s a huge possibility that he ate the other one, but wouldn’t it have turn up by now? I’m really worried that we threw it away when we cleaned the box :( It had only been a few hours so I thought it was safe!
That’s hard to say, but I’ve seen things reach the colon in 4 hours, so not impossible. As far as checking the poo, you really have to bag it and then mush every bit of it between your fingers, the earring won’t necessarily be obvious just sticking out of a piece, either.
It’s also possible that the earring is still in his stomach if he did eat it. It really wouldn’t hurt to get an x-ray done to make sure it’s not lodged in there somewhere. Cats can have problems with small things - I’ve seen surgery needed for a foam earplug, and for a small button - and they can also sometimes pass things easily. I’ve also seen small “heavy” objects stay in the stomach for weeks where they don’t cause a digestive problem because they’re small enough for food to pass, but eventually cause a problem once they do make it past the stomach or cause a perforation!
Not to cause alarm or anything, but so you know all the possibilities. If you haven’t been smooshing the poo thoroughly, though, it could definitely have passed without you realizing it.
If you still can’t find it, you could try put a nylon over your vacuum cleaner hose and vacuuming in all the little corners where it could have gone.
I’d second the xray if it never turned up. It costs a lot less than a diamond earring and then you can stop thinking about it. No good suggestions on how you might retrieve it if it shows up on the xray, but I guess that’s what the vet is for.:eek:
Depends. How long is the object? How fast is the cat travelling?
Ok, so how about an update?
I just completely cleaned the box and separated into a few bags so it’d be easier to go through, and completely smooshed it all up. No dice. I got excited a couple times but it was just some litter that was stuck together.
I called the vet but the line was busy, I’m going to give it a bit and call back.
I have to make a trip to our hometown to check out a place to have our wedding reception, and while I’m there I’m going to stop in on the local jeweler where the earrings were actually bought from and see if it would be possible to get a twin made. I have a long standing theory that he has a man-crush on my fiance, and always jumps through hoops for him, so there’s some hope there.
And the cat has been getting multiple belly massages with me saying soothingly, “Digest…digest DAMN YOU!” 
He gives me a :dubious: look.
Oh and this is what the earring is question looks like, though I think my diamonds are bigger, they look really small in that picture.
