The piece of yarn in the first picture cost me $1500 last night. It is and always will be the most expensive yarn I’ve ever had. My cats play with yarn like most cats do. Last night, instead of playing with it, my girl Uzi chomped this down in one fell swoop. Inducing vomiting in cats is hardly a guarantee and my girl was stubborn.
My options were to wait and see if the yarn came out on its own (risking it anchoring to a point in her stomach or intestines or causing a blockage resulting in the need for emergency surgery) or to have the vet do an endoscopy to hopefully grab the yarn before it could progress to her intestines. I’m glad I made the choice I did.
I just wanted to make people who may not otherwise know aware of 1) the risk of yarn and string and 2) remind people that anything can be an emergency and pets are not cheap. I’m very fortunate I was able to get her the care she needed up front than take the risk of waiting, seeing, and hoping for the best.
Just to add, because I’ve had a couple of people make comments on my other social media about pulling the yarn out on the other end: DO NOT EVER PULL TO HELP IT OUT. It can be anchored or caught on something and you can cause harm that wouldn’t be done if you let it pass on its own. You can trim the string as it appears if necessary, but just let it come to you in its own time.
Happy and safe knitting to you all, and may none of you ever pay $100 per inch of yarn like I did last night! 🩷
she's so pretty omg
Hi, vet tech here! I've assisted with the surgery to remove these 😬 glad your kitty is okay!
The thing is that the barbs on cats' tongues direct things down their throats, so even if you think your cat isn't the sort of dodo that would eat a string, it can happen in a moment by accident. They can't spit it out, the only way they can get it out of their mouth is to chomp through it and swallow it.
This is definitely my biggest fear since starting to crochet.
This is useful information and makes sense - thank you for sharing it!
My girl ate thread but I didn’t know it. A few days later she got an x-ray and I find out the thread was wrapped around her tongue and went all the way down to her intestines where it was bunched up. $4000 later she’s fine. The vet said it was a very impressive bit of string😅😭
My cat ate a piece of sewing string with a needle attached. The needle went right down her throat. It was one of the scariest moments in my life. The vet ER sedated her and sucked it out without even a single puncture.
I had the same experience; I saw the thread and needle in her mouth but it was too late to stop her. We got her to the emergency vet right away and she needed surgery. That needle cost $2000. Now I am very, very careful with needles and thread.
From the sounds of things Uzi is chaotic enough to fit her name. Is there an N around to balance her out?
She has an orange brother Raptor (Rappy) and a grey sister Lynn. All 3 of them are chaotic little assholes in their own ways. 😂
This is also a good PSA to get pet insurance! My partner and I pay about $30 a month for each of our cats with a $250 deductible and it’s already paying for itself due to an otherwise expensive visit a week ago
Where do you get your insurance from?? I pay $50 for my cat and she’s only 5 years old. Same deductible but it’s 90% coverage after that
We use one called fetch! Though it turns out we also have only 90% coverage after the deductible (I thought it was 100% but my partner just corrected me) so it’s pretty comparable
I'm glad your baby is okay!! One of mine once ate thread THAT WAS ON A NEEDLE and slurped it up needle and all. He got an endoscopy and was okay, but that was a very stressful and expensive overnight vet stay.
In the end, the vet gave me back the needle in a pill bottle. No thank you. 🤢
20 yards of button twist. Was our most expensive cat by far for over a decade. I'm glad you baby is ok.
My cat never had any interest in my yarn thankfully, but loved q-tips, which caused two very expensive vet trips. Zero self-preservation in these beasts!
Easter grass - or any long stringy things for that matter - will do the same thing
My cat once ate some balloon ribbon that was hanging down from a birthday balloon I had in my room. I was like 16 and didn't realize it was missing, I thought she just messed up the end by batting at it until I found it in her litter box later. Luckily, she's fine, still knocking cups down and causing chaos years later
This happened to my boi Kevin a few weeks ago! He's always been interested in my yarn but he's never fully eaten it! I woke up to him acting odd, pulled his tail off and bam, a 4 inch string sticking out of his little butt 😑 we did NOT pull the yarn but trimmed it, and took him to the kitty ER. After 6 hours of waiting they proclaimed him safe, trimmed him some more, and sent us home- they didn't charge us because of the long wait. Highly recommend Blue Pearl Animal Hospital... the wait sucked but the free was great.
I ended up buying a Re: Designed Project Bag so that this won't happen again!
Blue Pearl is truly the best
My dog swells stuff all the time, including string, yarn, bits of carpet fiber, plastic, etc. Or cat doesn't seem very interested in anything but cat and people food. She even leaves most people food alone.
I was job shadowing at a vet and witnessed an exploratory surgery to find the pieces of a towel a dog ate. That shot is serious as hell.
I had a real close call a while back where i pulled probably 3 feet of yarn out of my cats stomach
I’m glad your cat is ok, but that’s incredibly dangerous to do yourself and it is heavily advised against. There are so many things that can go wrong and you can end up tearing their stomach and/or intestines.
It was unfortunately 9 pm catching him with it still being eaten and i didn’t realize how much it was :/
My cat at allegedly ate a stitch marker. $500 later it didn’t come up from induced vomiting and vet said there is a possibility it will be able to pass it.
This cats eats everything. So yes, be careful
The face of no regrets
“And I’ll do it again.”
i keep all my yarn locked away completely unless i'm working on it. when it is out it is treated with more attention than an open flame.
my cat swallowed a string from a toy and i also opted for the endoscopy despite my cat being perfectly normal and playful. they got it out and were quite surprised !
Also note because of the way the spikes on the tongue are oriented, it’s really hard for them to eject fibrous things out of their mouth, so even if your cat is just a play and chewer, they may be forced to swallow a yarn because they can’t spit it out.
This goes for cat toys, too! We had the same exact thing happen, except it was 2.5 feet of cord from her wand toy! (So I guess I paid a little less per inch...) She definitely would not have been able to pass that, and we're lucky we realized what happened and got her in when we did. They couldn't make her throw up so they had to do an endoscopy. They said it was just starting to move towards the entrance of the intestines and if it had gone in there they would have had to do surgery.
I also want to add: never assume there’s no risk just because you think your cat wouldn’t!!
My cat has zero interest even in people food, and definitely not inedible objects. I’ve never had to keep things from her out of fear she’d eat them. Then once, out of nowhere, she was sitting next to me while I was weaving in ends and had some scraps next to me. Before I could even react, she was swallowing the end of a 6” piece. I have NO idea what compels them but never overestimate your cat’s intelligence, lesson learned!!
My cat, years ago, got into my yarn. Never noticed until he was pooping out the yarn and chasing it (thought he was chasing his tail, which he’d been doing long before the yarn) around on my bed while I was sleeping. Somehow managed to avoid emergency surgery, but that little shit ate at least a foot of yarn. Alive and well now, but holy crap. I love him, but he’s always actively trying to eat things he shouldnt
My biggest fear
One of my cats is a fiend for eating things that hurt her. String/yarn, shoelaces, silicone once...
I’m still traumatized by the time my partner and I had to very gently pull a strand of yarn from my cat’s butt. We only tried it because it was already 99% of the way out and the other cats were chasing him to…play with his butt yarn.
Do not recommend, we were so freaking lucky that it came out with just the tiniest pull otherwise it would have been off to the emergency vet. We watched him like a hawk for the next few days and I got way more vigilant about my yarn scraps. 😂😂
We had to do similar. Our girl cat had pooped most of it out and was understandably freaked out by this piece of poopy ribbon hanging from her bum. So she raced round the house trying to get rid of it. We managed to corner her and gently pull it out - most of it was already out and it just needed a very small tug to get the last small bit out. And then clean up poop ribbon marks in the house. Our boy cat wasn't in the least bit interested, fortunately
since I’m now knitting I’ll be sure to keep an eye on my cats around the yarn, mostly the younger (brainless) one. But that did remind me of a dog we once had who pooped blue and then a thick blue thing was stuck part of the way out. It was the felt innard of a blue marker. Hubble (now ex, but still a good guy) got to finish pulling it out.
I’m so happy your kitty is ok! My boy Ziggy learned his lesson when I first got him. He got into some greenish yellow merino I left out in the open and ate some without me knowing. All I found was a tangled mess so I just tossed it in a drawer to deal with at a later time. The only reason I found out he ate some is that after using his box one afternoon he ran under the couch instead of doing his normal lap around the apartment. When I peeked down to check on him he ran out and trailing behind him was a turd on a now brownish green merino string hanging from his little fart box. I got ahold of him and gently tugged the last inch of it out and he resumed normal post-poop zoomies. Since then he hasn’t really messed with my yarn, and I’ve learned to keep it where he can’t get it. Occasionally he’ll try to bat at it while I’m knitting or crocheting, but that’s totally allowed. After all, the yarn is taking my attention off of him and that’s unacceptable. Obviously I understand how serious the situation could have been, but in hindsight I always laugh when I think about Ziggy’s turd on a string.
Thank you for the reminder. I’m glad she’s ok.
My one cat does not care at all about yarn, but my girl cat will eat animal fiber yarn or cotton string when I'm not looking. I've had to pull it out of her mouth/throat(/maybe already stomach?) multiple times when she was younger and I've learned my lesson to always double knot my yarn bag closed so she can't get into it. It's such a weird instinct.
i’ve been lucky with my cat and he respects my yarn. except for one skein. it’s light pink acrylic that i had to hide because he likes to randomly chomp on the skein. just one huge mouthful and then make faces about the fibers in his mouth and he moves on.
As an emergency vet tech, you’ve explained everything very well. This is extremely good knowledge for any kitty owner to know, especially those of us who knit. Thank you for taking good care of your baby and sharing your experience ❤️
Sewing thread, too. My cat got ahold of one of my bobbins the other day. I figured it was one of the empty bobbins, which wouldn't be a big deal, but then I saw the trail of white thread... he's not happy that I stole his new toy, but I'm not having him swallow thread!
My last kitty was afraid of yarn and thread, so I never had to worry
At least she has a nice pair of boots now ;)
Thanks for the awareness and hope she’ll be okay
My tired ass brain thought you wrote “at least she’ll make a nice pair of boots now”, as in the boots were made out of the cat 🤦🏻♀️ I was like “damn that escalated quickly” lmao. So glad that’s not what was actually said. Time to nap haha
Gonna shave the rest of her and turn her fur into yarn to make her inception boots. 💀😂
Glad ur cat is okay. Thankfully this has only happened to my cat like once with a small piece of yarn. She was able to pass it in her stool... But it made a mess bc it was like the yarn hanging out of her butt still connected to the feces that she had excreted ...
Ive unfortunately had my kitty eat yarn before (and a rubber band at one point…) and we were able to induce vomiting to get it out.
Adding to this PSA, hair bands are dangerous as well. My friend didn’t realize her cat was eating hair bands and ended up with emergency surgery and them finding like 25 of them. That cat is back to normal now but it was a terrifying and expensive experience.
Yes, I keep all my yarn shut in my office, but I will say, he got into it and I had to take him to the emergency vet, he also got suture stuck in his mouth from my practice board so I have to be careful with that too!
Maybe this Kong yarn toy will soothe your nerves and Kitty’s desire to play!
Absolutely not. Tbh if that is constructed how it looks like it’s constructed it is WILDLY irresponsible for Kong to sell. It looks like basic super chunky chenille yarn attached to a little fabric wrap. Chenille/fuzzy yarns like that are just thin threads in the center. They can be ripped by hand and can absolutely be chewed into pieces and swallowed by a cat. Not to mention all the fibers can easily be pulled out and swallowed.
Not trying to be rude to you, but this is not, in any way, a safe toy.
My sister's cats have this one and it's not actual yarn. It's sturdier than it looks and too thick for them to swallow like they would string or thread. I'm sure more rambunctious chewers could damage it and I wouldn't let my dog have it, but it's actually pretty durable, and absolutely cannot be ripped by hand. I swear one of her cats has scissors for teeth and she hasn't been able to tear off any piece of it, even the fluff. You should always supervise pets with any kind of soft toy like this and check them often for tearing or loose pieces, but this one really isn't inherently dangerous. I've seen way sketchier toy mice or teaser toys for sale at Petsmart and Petco.
To me, it looks more like a thin sewn fabric tube. I’d be interested in seeing one in person to take a look at the construction.
I looks in the reviews and it looks like an industrially knitted like Sherpa texture fabric strip just cut and left to roll in on itself. However the first review picture says the fuzz easily tears away from the center string and they had to take the pieces away from the cat to stop them from eating it.
Looked*
We have one of these, and all three cats adore it.
New fear unlocked 😬😱! I'm going to go hide all my yarn now, especially from my 18 month old who LOVES YARN. Holy moly, glad your kitty is ok. Thanks for the PSA. ❤️🧶🐈⬛
Besides thoroughly agreeing with you and feeling your pain, the picture of your puddy tat Uzi had me giggling at her new boots!
I definitely didn’t play Low on repeat in the shower this morning while scream singing “Apple bottom jeans, boots with the fur”
For a seasonal gift that keeps on giving, enjoy this mashup of "Low" and "Feliz Navidad": https://youtu.be/6uUWi59GBN4?si=5euy3Of77PU3FXQT
It was reddit that told me about this possibility and when I got a cat again I started storing my works (I do cross stitch and knitting) under the blanket on my couch or inside the foot stool for a longer term stowaway. I'm still paranoid I'll leave a needle some day and either I sit on it and it stabs me or it stabs my cat.
For cross stitch needles, do you have a needle minder? They're basically flat magnets you keep in a corner of your work that hold spare needles or as a rest for your working needle rather than sticking them through your cloth (and risking them slipping out). They come in lots of cute designs, too!
If you've heard of them before, feel free to disregard, but if you haven't they might be a way to afford yourself a little bit of peace of mind. I totally understand the paranoia of leaving a needle where it ought not to linger.
I have a needle minder! But it has happened before that I pushed a needle off the minder by being a clumsy twit. 🤣 Or being undisciplined in putting the needle on the minder 😂🤣🤣
My girl is notorious for eating yarn, thread and fabric. As stated, never pull out either end!!
At your next visit ask them to show you how to make them stick out their tongue and show the full mouth. This is the only time where you are allowed to pull out (assuming you see the object as a whole.)
If you have extra hands to help carefully remove as sometimes the thread can wrap around the tongue and if not careful amputation can occur (my vet has seen it a few times).
Thankfully my cats have zero interest in string unless I'm actively using it.
I do have one cat that is obsessed with pins with round heads, so all pincushions must be kept hidden. And the same cat thinks wire is the BEST TOY so if I'm doing any crafts that use wire I need to immediately clean up all trimmings because he WILL eat them and I do not want that vet bill.
I also have a cat who likes pins. He likes to pull them out of the project and drop them in the carpet for my feet to find later.
That’s really considerate of him!
Oof, yeah eating wire has more terrifying risks.
Thankfully my cats chomp down then spit it out. I think they hate the taste. This is a big fear of mine. Glad your baby was okay
Piggy backing on that note.....keep ALL SMALL THINGS away from your cats! I knew someone who's cat would play with hair bands, ate one, tied up in her intestines and had a bigger bill than $1400!
I keep rubber bands, pipe cleaners, hair bands....anything I'd keep away from a baby. Hard as hell and annoying but worth it!
*Edit-fucking autocorrect
One of mine are the same there. All hair ties are put away as a rule because he will chomp no matter what. Thankfully the same idiot only view my yarn as potential pillows. (Yes, he's adorable then.)
Mine did that a week after I adopted him. 10 weeks old. And it was so much more. It was 4ft. I had no idea. I had cut a piece of yarn off and laid it down. Then I saw him eating it like spaghetti. I tried to grab him but he ran and it was gone. Had to go to the vet er. He was BARELY big enough to scope. $2700 later and he was ok. I was so scared. Thank God my parents were willing to pay for it. I definitely couldn't afford it. The 2 specialists that scoped him were "impressed" he was able to even ingest so much. I felt so stupid. My old cat would play with yarn. Never EAT it. So glad you posted this. A little reminder could save a life.
I’m so happy to hear your baby is safe and ok.
I'm glad you caught it before it went further into kitty's system! $1500 is relatively cheap compared for emergency cat care. (my cat developed urinary crystals last August and that bill was over $4500 because he had a week long hospital stay)
After finding out our little gremlin will always go after my yarn and try to eat it, I make sure to put my work in drawstring bags which are then put away behind a door at night. I will sometimes wake up from a dead sleep worried that I didn't put the yarn away and have to go check else I can't go back to sleep.
My "kitten" (she's 18 months and huge already, probably 12 lbs) loves yarn! She kept stealing skeins from my project basket (even skeins in plastic bags!) and we'd find them in cat tunnels and her tents, everywhere. So I started putting yarn in better places, tying WIP bags closed, storing projects in closets. But she wasn't eating it (TG) just running off with skeins in her mouth like they were her kitten babies (hysterically funny and cute). But she'd also wreck those skeins so...better yarn security, lol. Now I'm even more glad I've locked everything up. 😱🐈⬛❤️🧶
Also sewing. I keep a bowl at the machine and make sure all the loose threads go into it. I also use wonder clips instead of pins where i can.
My cats love grabbing pins in their mouth and then letting them fall back on the magnet pad. Assholes.
This!! I had no idea cats would eat needles (sharp, unpleasant?!) but one of mine did and it was a very expensive trip to the emergency vet.
Two different cats have been in my clinic in the last two months for swallowing sewing needles 🙃 they're both okay! But damn if I'm not paranoid about my own cats when I work on any projects..
So scary! My oldest baby got ahold of one of my daughter's keychains they made at Boys & Girls Club with the plastic flat strings you braid or knot together. He chewed it into little plastic crumbs behind the couch and proceeded to eat at least half of it. He was just a kitten at the time and cost us about $1500 at the emergency vet when he stopped eating and pooping because he got plugged up. Thankfully we were able to just use a still softener to move things along without surgery. That crazy kitten is now a 22 lb chonker who stil loves to steal things but learned his lesson about eating anything but kitty food!
I had a jerk who ate so much of his own fur he got blocked, though at least we were spared the need for surgery because it eventually passed. Had to pay for several imaging studies and several days under observation. He unfortunately learned nothing, though I learned to brush him more.
I have a long hair male and 2 short hair females. The youngest female will eat pieces of her brother’s fur off the rug!!!
My guy does the same and he's the short haired one! We make him do tricks for soft tuna treats every morning to help keep things moving, otherwise he pukes instead of pooping. I found any moist treat with fish oils in it along with a wet tube treat in the morning is enough keep things running through ok.
Wow I'm so glad your baby is ok!
I always cringe when I see posts of knitted or crocheted cat toys too because of this very concern
I'm suddenly glad I was paranoid about letting my cats NOT have really small "sparkle balls" (craft pompoms) to play with instead of larger ones.
Only $1500? Happened to me and it was $3000. Scary af.
That must have been so terrifying to go through in the moment. You’re very lucky to have caught it when you did and I’m so, so happy your kitty is okay!
Honestly that’s something that’s always worried me about being into yarn crafts while having cats—I watch them like a hawk when it’s out, keep the yarn away in bins when I’m not actively crafting, and don’t let them play with my yarn at all. Call me paranoid but if I can prevent this or something similar from happening, it’s worth it.
I'm paranoid like this with my yarn as well as any ribbon, tinsel, and twine (or other adjacent products) too!
Consider it a lesson learned!
So glad your kitty is okay and I'm sorry you had to deal with this. I'm fanatical about scrap yarn (or even yarn on the ball), rubber bands, hair ties, but I still will find random things floating around. Needless to say, this is one of my biggest cat fears!
So glad it's a happy ending! Emergency vets aren't cheap. When I realized that our 2 newest cats were yarn gremlins, all yarn got put in a room we keep shut. All my yarn bags need to have zippers now, so I can close it up if I need to walk away for a couple minutes. These kitties work fast!
Happy everything turned out ok for your kitty! One of mine once swallowed 4m of yarn. It ended up costing me $4000 but the little terror survived.
I’m glad your cat is ok!! I’ll extend the warning to hair ties- my cat used to play with hair ties, and they’d always go missing. I assumed they were under furniture, until my cat threw up a tangle of 9 hair ties. Fortunately they were intact, and the vet confirmed she’d gotten them out. But who knows how long she’d been eating them….we got sooo lucky. Anything string-shaped can be dangerous!
Ugh I have an acquaintance who tells me "cute" stories about how her cat brings her hair ties in bed overnight and all I can think of is that she's probably not keeping exact track of how many may be disappearing. She always brushes me off when I remind her that this cat has already had an emergency surgery because she ate a bunch of tape and blobs of her own fur that turned into a blockage of fur and tape.
I'm glad everything turned out alright!! My cat recently slurped up about 10 inches of elastic string from one of her toys and it was terrifying. Unfortunately I didn't realize she had stolen the toy until the next day, but fortunately it came out in one piece. She has no idea she did anything dangerous and while I'm already strict about yarn, now I'm going to be much more strict about toys.
Edit: Oh yeah just to be clear, I did take her to an urgent care vet, but because it had been a while and X-rays are often inconclusive, they couldn't really do anything and they said to observe because she was acting and eating normally. If this happens to people reading this, please talk to a vet and don't assume it'll be ok just because it was for me.
I'm very glad everything turned out okay for you and your cat, she's a beauty. And now she's sporting "the boots with the fur". 🥰
And for all the cat owners out there, knitter or not, remember in this holiday season that tinsel on the tree is just as dangerous as any other fiber. Keep your babies safe!