My mom was visiting the other day. Apparently she left behind a long strand of her hair, which promptly made it into Squiggy’s belly. Last night Squiggy visited the Sahara-in-a-box, and shat two lovely turds, linked delicately together by said hair like a string of pearls (only much bigger and not as pretty).
Exiting the litter box with the end of the hair still firmly clenched in his little sphincter, Squiggy’s ears tipped at an odd angle as he was walking down the hall, as if to say: “Strange, there is something… Something… Something… Something attacking my butt!”
He started racing back and forth through the apartment, in a blind panic, with the two turds flapping and swinging around behind him like Christmas lights plugged into his ass. By the time we caught up with Squiggy, he was sitting calmly in the bedroom. He had evaded his attackers.
And we had to find them.
Armed with flashlights and with the diligence of the crew from CSI, we found only one under the bed.
And the dog barfed in the hall… Coincidence?
Why, oh why, do humans take in insane species as pets???
Ah, yes, the old hair-in-a-turd. I don’t have indoor pets, but quite often, when my kids were babies, I’d find hairs in their diapers. Nothing says “mother love” quite like a mom pulling the other end of those hairs from her darling’s little brown starfish. Fun times, I tell ya!
I laughed out loud at your description of your cat’s reaction, though! And though the thought is completely repulsive, I agree–the dog puke probably wasn’t a cooincidence!
Regarding the OP, I have had the memorable experience (sadly, more than once) of pulling string doots out of my dog. I always hum that music that old-time magicians used when reeling out a fantastically long string of scarves from their hat. I find it improves the experience temendously (and amuses and grosses out my husband in equal proportions).
I’ve had to pull a “string of pearls” from my dog’s ass exactly once and Lord God, once was enough. I still shudder and gag just thinking of it. The culprit in this case was a rope toy which covered my carpet in little multi-colored strings when my pooches managed to gnaw it in half.
My dog hunched to poo, but that didn’t take care of the problem. She hunch-walked across the yard, pausing on occasion to snap at her backside. She apparently felt the best course of action was to present the “dangler” to me, the one with the opposable thumbs. When I pulled it out, she whipped around in surprise as if to say, “What the hell are you doing back there?” After that, we had a talk about eating strings, and I think I managed to convince her it was in the best of both of our interests for her to refrain from eating them in the furture because I haven’t had to do it since.
Luckily, in the dozen or so years that I’ve had Lenny, I’ve never had such a thing happen. This is Squiggy’s second escape from the Turds of Doom.
Previously, he had eaten a short piece of thread from when I was replacing a lost button on a shirt. It was the same spectacle: He started racing around at full speed, in a terrorized run for his life, until the dangler broke free. You’d think he was trying to shake off an Alien face-hugger that had opted for an alternate route.
It’s a good thing it’s nearly quittin time or I’d be so in trouble! How does one explain poopy pearls to one’s coworkers? :o And why exactly I was laughing out loud.
Yes, I’m sure it would have been high comedy for anyone watching. The whole scene was ridiculous. When Squiggy started his panic laps, I just looked up from my paper wondering: “What the hell is his problem?”
Next thing I knew, my fiancee was sprinting after him with a roll of paper towels in her hand like a relay baton, squealing something along the lines of “Omigod, eeeeewwww, there’s poo hanging from his bum!”
I didn’t quite get what all the fuss was about. “What, like a dingleberry?” I asked. And from the other room she yelled “No, big poo!”
I still had no idea what the hell she was talking about, but her voice had that womanly tone of urgency usually reserved for when their kids are playing in traffic. So I got up, figuring I’d tackle the furball on his next pass. When he started heading in my direction, I was getting ready to snag him, and then the concept of “big poo” finally registered with my neanderthal brain. No way I’m I grabbing a shitty cat!
Squiggy was actually totally clean, and I saw what my fiancee was talking about when he ran away from me back down the hall.
I bet the neighbors downstairs were wondering what the stampede in my apartment was all about.
My cat once ate a length of blue ribbon…quarter inch wide double-faced satin ribbon, to be exact…and when that started passing, she was whipping around in circles with poo flying everywhere. We tackled her and I had the lovely task of pulling it out of her while she yowled as if she were being violated. And then I got to clean the walls.
I’ve been told you have to be careful doing that. It it’s something really long it can be tanlged up in their intestines in all sorts of bizarre ways.
My friend’s dog ate a pair of nylong panty hose, and they had to take him to the vet when about 15" inches of one panty-hose leg was sticking out of his butt, with the rest all bunched up in his colon.
All together now (four part harmony if we can): “EEEwwWWwwWWWWW!”
There I was laughing and laughing, recalling similar good times with the dogs we’ve had over the years - then I find out someone has a Lenny and a Squiggy - that’s what my sister and I used to call each other! My old cat’s middle name was Boo Boo Kitty (from the same show).
Good times…
See y’all are lucky if you’re able to actually catch your pets. One of the kittens I had had a problem one morning (as I’m running late to work, naturally) and decided to get rid of it by scooting across the carpet, leaving big brown smears as she went.
My reaction was pretty much :eek: :mad: as I attempted to catch her. She’d dart just out of reach and scooooot scoot scoot, then run away again and scoot scoot. I finally grabbed her but she wiggled away before I got much accomplished.
That could be poop clung to the butt, but it could be be clogged anal sacs. Many people aren’t aware cats have anal sacs like dogs. Or worms. Personally, I’d rather have the clogged anal sacs - my vet charges $8 to express them. Worms are gross and involve putting a wormer from the vet (poison) in the poor animal.
You can usually tell when it’s a cling-on though. Scooting because the cat’s sacs need emptying produces far less noticeable skid-marks than when a it’s trying to wipe his ass on your rug to get rid of something stuck in his fur.
When my sister’s cat had kittens. there was a little nervous one. He was a momma’s boy and was the last one weaned. Eventually he made the switch to solid food. And when he had his first solid-food poop, he freaked and started scooting in a panic as if something was trying to crawl into his butt. He ony did it that one time though. It was pretty funny.
The one time we had to deal with evidence of string ingestion… the cat was not in fact panicked by the protuberance. She was playing with it. It was like this lovely stringy toy that rippled across the floor and danced enchantingly just out of reach whenever she tried to pounce on it. Good times :eek: There were no “pearls” on the string when we found it, fortunately.
When we realized what the new toy was, I grabbed the cat, my roommate grabbed a towl, she grasped the end of the string and gently pulled, performing a stringectomy. The darn thing was about 3 feet long, only half of which was “in play”.
Yeah, I know now that this was a foolishing thing to do and could have resulted in damaged intestines and a vet bill that we as college students could not have afforded, but fortunately we got away with it.
I’ve been told that you should never, ever, pull string, ribbon, christmas tinsel or any other type of long stringy object from a cat’s backside. The reason for this is that you have no idea how long the item in question is and it can get wrapped around the intestine and the act of trying to pull it out can perforate the intestine and kill the kitty.
The correct way to handle this (and I’m thinking that hair might be an exception since it’s so thin and breakable) is to cut off the ribbon or string as close to the cat’s anus as possible and continue to do so daily until the entire length is expelled.
:eek: :mad: 
as I attempted to catch her. She’d dart just out of reach and scooooot scoot scoot, then run away again and scoot scoot. I finally grabbed her but she wiggled away before I got much accomplished.