In January we adopted two ginger cats from a local cat rescue society. Diana and Mercury are about 13 months old, and, seeing as how our previous cats were 14 and 20 years old when they died, are reintroducing us to the joys of younger, more active cats.
Last night I caught Mercury swallowing the last of a 12 to 18" blue cloth ribbon. After googling, it looks like this could be quite serious, or nothing much. My wife called the vet this morning, and was told to be on the lookout for the signs of intestinal blockage, but that things may just work themselves out.
So Doper cat owners, have your felines done anything like this and survived, or at least survived without abdominal surgery? I guess I’m looking for a confidence level, something like “3/4s of the time the cat will pass the potential obstruction”, just so I can stop worrying so much, while still being alert for problems.
Well, if you catch it in the first few hours, before it starts going into the intestine, you can just pull it out with an endoscope, and roughly 99% of those cats do wonderfully. (Some can have adverse reactions to the anesthesia or some freak accident with the scope, but I’ve never seen or heard of it actually happening.)
Short lengths of ribbon are often fine. Well, not fine, but they often pass without complications. The longer the foreign body, though, the higher the risk of it causing problems. Unfortunately, your kitty ate a pretty long foreign body, so she’s at much higher risk for obstruction than most of the ribbon ingestions we see. I’d watch her like a hawk and whisk her to the vet at the first sign of lethargy, reduced appetite, vomiting, or stool changes. Especially watch for changes in the smell, texture, and amount of the stool. If she has gelatinous stool, or the stool gets a coppery sort of smell to it, she needs a vet RIGHT AWAY.
We can’t even wrap presents because der honeys are always trying to eat the ribbons. It is very dangerous…especially that length your kitty ate. I’d take her to the vet just to be safe.
I went through the same thing with one of my kitties. He ate a 3’ section of cord. I just watched his poop for a few days, and sure enough, out it came.
If it hadn’t come out, our vet assured us it would be a very costly surgury.
It is, indeed, a costly surgery. My cat ate a piece of string (I still have no clue where she got it) that wouldn’t pass…I noticed it when she started to poop it out, but gentle pulling wouldn’t dislodge it and you can’t yank or it can slice through loops of her intestine.
So, off to the vet she went. The surgery itself cost about $650, and then I spent another $350 or so in follow-up care when she came down with a massive infection after her course of antibiotic meds was over. I guess what she was given wasn’t powerful enough, it was only keeping things under control, because as soon as she was done with them, she developed a lump on her side (approximately where they’d cut her intestines in 3 places to remove the string) about the size of half a baseball. Rushed off to the vet again, bloodwork every 3 days, different antibiotics, etc.
All of that, and I was still sure she was going to die. She had to be forced to eat and drink (oral syringe squirting food and water down her throat), had to be carried to the litter box and then carried back to her place on the sofa. It was awful.
Needless to say, I’m diligent about keeping any sort of string/cord/ribbon/etc. out of reach now. That is an experience I’m not keen on repeating.
Ouch! I was afraid of that. CrazyCatLady, I would have gone to the emergency vet last night, but not only didn’t I know how potentially serious it was, I didn’t know how long or exactly what it was. It wasn’t until talking with my wife this morning that we figured out what it was.
This really and truly sucks. Mercury was rapidly becoming “our” cat; i.e., the one that preferred hanging around and being affectionate to adults, while his sister is my son’s cat. Though we’ve only had him a few months we’re already very attached.
Okay, so if we watch his stool for the next 3-4 days, and it either comes out during that time or it doesn’t but he presents no symptoms, can we assume that all is well? (I’m assuming that if we don’t find it in his stool that he crawled behind something and threw it up after I went to bed last night.) What is the window for where I can breathe a sigh of relief?
I have a cat who once passed a wire twist-tie from the bread with no apparent ill effects. We like to rag him about it. He gets a really embarrassed look on his face, but I think he’d do it again if given the chance, so we don’t leave our twist-ties out on the counter anymore.
Luck to your kitty!
Well, it depends, really. If you haven’t found it in the stool, and you haven’t found it in the puke, then odds are good it’s still in there. And that ain’t good. Even if it’s not causing an obstruction, the ribbon will eventually cause erosions in the intestines. If this goes on long enough and the erosions get bad enough, the bowel can perforate. You don’t want to know what kind of money or odds you’re talking about then. That’s pretty much a worst-case scenario, but still, you don’t want to know.
These erosions can take a bit to form and to start showing symptoms. Overall, I’d say if he’s perfectly normal after a week, I’d relax but still keep an eye on him for another week or so. If he’s had absolutely zero changes in his appetite, energy level, and litterbox habits after a couple of weeks, you’re probably in the clear.
Out of curiosity, did you actually see him eating the ribbon? We see a lot of foreign body and rodenticide ingestions and overdoses on owner meds where it turns out the animal didn’t eat anything at all. The owner gets home and finds the pills or rat bait or whatever, and usually sounds very embarrassed when they call us back. If you didn’t actually see him eat it, he could have just carried it off somewhere and you have nothing to worry about. I’d carry out a very thorough search in, under, and behind all the furniture and any places he likes to stash stuff.
My first cat, Muffin, ate quite a long piece of ribbon one time without my knowledge. The first inkling I got was when she hopped out of her litter box and went crazy trying to get off this long thing sticking out of her butt. Spinning around like a crazy thing, with bits of poop flying everywhere. We had no idea what was going on…thought maybe it was a tapeworm or something. We grabbed her, held her down, and I grabbed the item (with a paper towel!) and pulled it out gently. It turned out to be about a foot of ribbon…at least 8 inches had already come out during her trip to the box. She was just wild to get it out of her! Afterwards she just stalked away (embarassed, most likely) and cleaned herself up. We never spoke of it again, and she suffered no ill effects before or after.
Hopefully your cat will be as lucky, but since you know she ate it, it’s probably a good idea to check with the vet.
Thanks to all for the words of encouragement and advice. So far, he has shown no change in activity, energy level, etc., but we’re keeping a close eye on him, and checking the litter box frequently.
CrazyCatLady, yes, I’m almost completely sure that he ate it. When I saw him, just a couple of inches of the ribbon were protruding from his mouth, and when I tried to grab him to stop him from swallowing the rest he ran to the basement. The only other possibility is that he had not actually swallowed any of the ribbon when I first saw him, and the whole thing was jammed in his mouth, but I don’t think that’s likely.
I just wanted to post an update on Mercury’s condition. Last night, he started throwing up clear vomitus, and this morning he was lethargic and had no appetite. We took him to the vet’s office, and when the vet arrives they will X-ray and let us know what they find. Hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst.
So far, so good. The vet says there’s no sign of accordioning of the intestines on the X-ray, so it’s possible that the ribbon is passing normally and he’ll be fine without intervention. In the meantime, he’s getting IV fluids and they’re running blood and urine panels.
In the future, I will be very careful of any “linear foreign bodies” in cat accessible places!
One of my cats loves to do stuff like this and once ate a balloon string that was3-4 feet long. I caught her just as she swallowed the last inch. Besides keeping a close eye on her I gave her Petromalt hairball goo (which is mostly petroleum jelly) in the hopes that it would facilitate passage of the string. I gave her an inch or so of this ointment 2-3 times a day for two days until she passed the string. Worked like a charm. She did the “psychotic cat running in circles trying to pull out the string” thing after leaving the litter box on day two and I was able to gently extract the string accompanied by the most eerie continuous yowl she has ever uttered. It was a seriously yucky cat moment but ended well.
I am now vigilant for long stringy objects in her environment.
Just got an update from vet no. 2 (the afternoon shift). He agrees that it doesn’t look like the ribbon is causing an obstruction, but Mercury is showing signs of gastritis, so it seems like things may be moving along. Surgery will probably not be required, and they’re keeping him until at least tomorrow night for antibiotics, IV fluids, etc.
Mercury came home on Saturday morning, and seems to be doing fine. We’re back to the “wait and see” part, but the vet is optimistic that there’ll be no serious problems. Thanks, all, for the stories and good thoughts.
