Today’s strip is 3 parts humor, 1 part PSA. This past year my friend’s cat became ill and when x-rays were done the vet found the cat had attempted to swallow a needle. She found out that many cats will take a threaded needle and chew, chew, chew the threaded part all the way to the needle itself. She was warned not to leave threaded needles out. Until she told me this, I had a habit of pinning my needles to the fabric of a project I was working on (I know a lot of sewing folks share this habit!) Now when I pause during a stitch, wherever I am in a project, I cut and knot the thread and put the needle away. When I thought of doing a strip on the boys investigating Gwen’s new blanket, I thought I’d slip the advice in, and explain here in the comments!
The best news is her kitty recovered and is healthy now, and we can learn from that experience and keep our kitties safe too! I have been grateful to her for sharing this advice with me since it happened.
Thanks for calling attention to this. It’s not just the needle that can cause problems… my vet warned me that thread can wrap around and even cut through the intestines (sorry for the unpleasant image, but better safe than sorry). I had never worried about it (my previous cats showed no interest in thread), but then I had a cat with pica behavior (eats non-food things) and had to learn to put my clipped threads directly in the garbage; once I found her slurping down some heavy nylon upholstery thread and managed to get it back just in time! I have another cat that loves to chew on rubber bands and paper clips, so I take those away from her in case of something similar happening.
Absolutely agreed! My cats have always attempted to ‘eat’ any thread like stuff around the house. I had one who would cruise the trashcans and pick out stuff like floss or the plastic strip from cigarette packs and eat them. I learned to toss all that kind of stuff into the under the sink trash or flush it. And you’re right, Sue Ellen…it can wrap around their intestines and it’s fatal! You just never know what the heck they’ll find interesting to chew on!
Lemme just add to the PSA that pet insurance exists, is pretty affordable and easy to figure out, and can help you handle situations like the ones described wherein cats eat needles and have subsequent issues, or eat thread which can also cause some serious (and expensive) problems!
I can confirm that thread itself is a big danger. One of my little guys got into my sewing kit as a kitten and ate quite a bit. He had to have abdominal surgery to remove it and he had to be very carefully monitored because intestinal stitches are very delicate. Fortunately he recovered fully.
Please, please keep threat and needles locked away from cats (and yarn and rubbers bands… anything string-like can be a danger). If your cat starts hiding and vomits, especially bile, check your sewing kit and be sure they didn’t make a raid on it. The quicker it’s caught, the more likely your cat will recover safely!
I’ve had to rescue yarn that a cat was swallowing (they can’t stop swallowing it, is the problem) that had gone far enough down the cat’s throat that the end was starting to disintegrate. (Eww!) Neither of us enjoyed that process.
While we’re at it, some cats ADORE earplugs. They’re just the right size to become kitty-intestine-plugs, and a blocked-up intestine leads right to a lethargic and then very ill kitty. This happened to a friend’s cat while she was out of town. (Someone else was house-sitting, but they had been given my number, as a backup cat-expert-person. I’m really glad they called. Kitty had surgery and was fine.)
We learned the hard way on threaded needles. We hand sewed our wedding attire. Our big fluffy orange tiger,, Tiger, swallowed a thread and needle. We took him to the vet when we got home from the wedding ceremony, to find him on the floor in obvious distress. Took him to the vet, where the x-ray showed the swallowed needle. He didn’t make it, passing as they attempted to remove it. I still, 19 years later, miss him terribly. He’d adopted me almost as soon as I moved in with my soon-to-be wife. He was my big fluffy cuddles. A cat can never be replaced. You can, in time, find another fluffy cuddles, but it’s not the same, and the cats that have adopted me since, have not filled that void. Two have in time, left their own voids as time, (and diabetes on one) took their toll. I wish cats could live as long, or longer, than we do.
Yes! I’ve had to pluck needles out of the throats of two of my cats! it was sooo scary!
ps- my cats insist on laying right on top of whatever i’m sewing – sometimes even attacking the needle in the sewing machine – they live dangerously too =)
Ah, cats and sewing. My scariest moment was when my cat sat down on a project that I had just pinned together, and proceeded to start pulling all the pins out with her teeth and trying to eat them! Thankfully I managed to get them all away from her. Now she contents herself with being the world’s fluffiest and least useful pattern weight 😉
Wish I’d had that PSA a ways back. My holstein cat (black and white splotches) decided she wanted to try embroidery floss and sucked the needle down as well. This happened on a Sunday, the vet I called evidently didn’t believe me and suggested I feed her mineral oil and keep an eye on her. The next day her throat abscessed (where the needle had lodged) I took her to a better vet and after a week she was mostly recovered although her voice was ruined. Thread, floss, presumably yarn, it evidently all looks like spaghetti to them.
I didn’t know that about cats and threaded needles. I too used to weave the needle in when taking a break. No more!
But the real question of the day, can a blanket Love!?!?
Lol!
I am so, so glad you told me!! I never would have thought of it! I had to try and slide it into one of the strips somehow, for other sewing folks out there. 🙂
We had a cat that ate dental floss once. I didn’t know until I saw it hanging out of his butt. I thought it was just sticking to him but he hissed when I tugged it so obviously it had gone through him. I figured I’d dodged a bullet with that one and now we are careful that used dental floss gets buried in the trash.
This is why I keep the door to my sewing room locked… One of my cats will open the door if it’s only shut, but he can’t quite manage to turn the key in the lock.
And in a follow-up PSA: It’s not just needles that are dangerous, it’s also thread and yarn. It can twist around the intestines and block them off which is very dangerous indeed!
Mine have never eaten needles, but more than once I’ve had to pull thread from their mouths and it just kept coming and coming like a magician’s hanky. Just so much slimy, slobbery thread. YUCK!
Elvis’s yelling face in the last panel is so cute I just can’t be intimidated! But tell him to rest assured that Gwen will find him MUCH more interesting than a blanket sooner than he thinks 😉
Even just thread can be hazardous! One of my cats swallowed about a yard of thread, but he swallowed the two ends and the middle got stuck under his tongue. The vet had to cut it loose from under his tongue and then surgically remove the rest, which was tangled in his stomach. Even after that, he would still go after thread, so now the cats aren’t allowed in the sewing room.
Oh thank you for mentioning the danger of just thread on its own.
My Hecubus (a Puck in looks, a Lupin in spirit) used up two of his lives eating needless thread. Fortunately, both times the vet found the thread wrapped around a tooth and clipped it. The thread passed on its own, and surgery wasn’t required. Both times, the vet (different vets) returned the thread to me, neatly coiled in a little plastic baggie.
My cats don’t do needles as a rule, but the young male has a DEFINITE attachment to plastic. More than once I’ve had to stop him from chewing, chewing, chewing…..it’d be amusing if it weren’t quite so dangerous.
Our Chipie loves plastic too, Especially the thick stuff that he can really bite down on. We think he likes the pop as his teeth puncture through it. Unfortunately, he also like to rip well-chewed bits off and sometimes swallow them, so he only gets his plastic under supervision now.
Elvis really has the full “J’accuse!” act down pat in this one! Lupin’s smug grin is perfect, too!
Loose lengths of yarn and thread can also be dangerous. When I was young, one of our Siamese cats, Big Bad John, once swallowed about a foot of yarn. It went all the way through his digestive system intact. Eventually a small piece was hanging out his backside. It wrapped around the leg of a chair, and when he ran off, the whole length of yarn was ripped out of him. I’ll never forget the horrible yowl he let out when that happened. We rushed him to the vet. Fortunately, it didn’t do any lasting damage, but the vet said he’d had cases where yarn had gotten tangled up inside of a cat’s digestive system with fatal outcomes. From then on, I made sure not to leave any loose ends of yarn where the cats could get them. He also warned about tinsel icicles on Christmas trees.
Also on the tinsel icicles on Christmas trees – totally poisonous, just don’t use them! Mind you, we can no longer have any Christmas tree in our house unless we block off a floor to the cats, because they’ll try to eat any part of it, both RealTree and FakeTree. It’s gotten so stressful that we just don’t have a tree of any kind at all (but then, we don’t have kids, which makes it easier)
Thank you, both for the humor in your strips and for the PSA. I’ve had a very rough week – after I was hospitalized for 3 days, I was only home for 2 days before I had to rush my 16 yo cat to the vet and have him put to sleep because his body was already crashing. He was my Mama’s boy and my protector/nurse cat whenever I’ve been sick, so your little ones are very lucky to grow up with a cat like Elvis watching out for them. Thank you also for brightening my day, I look forward to every one of your strips.
Cats will eat lots of things, as another of your regular admirers Ayshela will confirm, A woman we both know had to brig her cat for surgery after eating a bra strap. Lesson, I guess, is constant vigilance. BTW, the cat, Boris the Beast – adopted from Purrfect Pals – is now fine, if not exactly contrite.
Good work on the PSA. In other news, ROFLMAO!!!! “Can a blanket love?!?” “I like to live dangerously” Oh my goodness! The futility of needlework around cats!
Does anybody use sewing machine bobbins anymore? My next door neighbor’s cat was saved at the last moment when she had swallowed a bobbin full of thread, the leading end of which was wrapped around her tongue. Tongue slowly pulled in the direction the bobbin was headed, if you get my drift. Discovered at the very last possible moment to save her, so a happy ending ensued. We all learned the lesson about how dangerous the equation is of cat + thread. Thanks for the reminder!
People must think we’re nuts when we come over because there are pin cushions up high on the book shelves. My boyfriend and I are both historical costumers, and this is the only place our boys wont’ get to them!
They dont’ seem to want to eat them, but they are obsessed with pulling them out and I can just see where that could go wrong….
Daw, Elvis! Mom knows better than to saw anything with cats in the room. Forget needles ad tread, all the batting keeps anything from getting done! Cute though.
So the cats are locked out of the bedroom and Elvis isn’t allowed in the cradle? I don’t like this continued erosion of the cats’ rights with the arrival of the new baby. 😉
I have a plastic munchkin, and a hair nibbler…Pica is a real and present danger, so we have to be as aware with our pets as we are with small children and keep all potential hazards out of their reach! I knit, and all of my yarn and supplies have to be safely stowed when not in use.
Thanks so much for the head’s up, Georgia! I’m not big on sewing, but the odd times when I do I have been known to walk away from the work for a few minutes – I won’t do that again! One of my late beloved cats, as a youngster, managed to swallow an unblown-up balloon, which terrified us all; fortunately, the rubber/plastic/whatever-it-is passed through her intestinal tract completely intact, as proved by litter-box evidence. Scary enough to make sure never to leave balloons unattended (though we already knew that about ones that are blown up – cat claw, KaPOW! – cat under bed! And yeah, I agree with Elvis, “Can Blankets LOVE????”
I feel so fortunate that my guy only plays with string and thread. Makes tying my shoes a challenge some mornings, but all that he chews the laces, he doesn’t swallow them. I do need to keep hm out of the shop area when I’m working, though, as hot and sharp toys don’t go well with an adventurous feline. (I am an electrical engineer, and do machine work as well)
after i use dental floss i roll it into aroudn my fingers so i can make one cut and it will be in a bunch of very short pieces in the trash. I do similar things with leftover bits of thread or yarn.
Years ago when my sister and I were transporting horses from the mid-west to the west coast (where she lived) she had taken on the task of making curtains for the horse trailer sleeping compartment. Suddenly one of her six month old kittens had blood in her mouth … she was sure she must have taken in a threaded needle. After much angst, and probing it dawned on me that little Bo Peep was loosing her baby teeth ! No needles were involved.. It does remind us tho that threaded needles and small animals do not mix well. On another note: great strip Georgia. You are amazing! Hugs
One of my cats–surprisingly, the less naughty one–is obsessed with stringlike items. Last year she had to have an emergency endoscopy because it became obvious that her ongoing GI issues were due to eating foreign objects. The nice emergency vets removed multiple hair elastics, a length of string, and a shoelace from her stomach. She was very lucky nothing had moved into her intestines.
(Yes, I watch her like a hawk now, but I often wonder what I might have missed that she’s found.)
One of my cats, Orion, loves to chew on the ‘crunchy’ plastic that is wrapped around things like bottles of cold medicine, or sauce. He never eats it, but apparently he likes the sound it makes when he chews on it.
Thread and yarn, especially acrylic/nylon/polyester yarns, can be very dangerous to cats. I knit catnip mice, but only out of cotton yarn, which at least has a chance of being dissolved in the stomach, but so far I’ve been lucky that none of my cats has tried to eat it.
Also be very careful with ribbons for wrapping presents, and with tinsel. Those are very dangerous for cats.
But they will eat anything sometimes. One time, my late, lamented Malachi, when he was only about 3, (he lived till he was a week short of 18) ate the plastic absorbent thing that goes into packages of meat one buys at the grocery store. It definitely passed, and I discovered it when I did the litter boxes.
At the risk of squicking you all, have any of you ever discovered that your long hair has been ingested? Mine is short now, but when I could sit on it, I would.. er… nevermind.
My persian, Porthos, got a hold of one of my mothers threaded sewing needles once. @_@ It got stuck in his gums and we had a nasty time holding him still while my mothers boyfriend got it out with a set of pliers. x.x Every one of us was either bit or scratched but at least my fuzzy snuggle bug is still around to this day and for that I am eternally grateful. :3
Don’t know that we’ve ever had a cat try to eat needle and/or thread around here, but we’ve always kept that stuff tucked away in sewing boxes anyway, so they probably just have never gotten the chance.
We did learn very early on, however, that we had to keep cords (particularly headphones – they never went after any power cords) out of our cats’ reach. They didn’t actually try to eat any of it. They would just chew thru the cord and leave us with the remains.
My Hazza will dig through my purse to find my headphones! I’ve had to get a little zipped bag to keep them in, and sometimes he’ll steal that and hide it around the house (I’m assuming until he learns how to work a zipper!)
I haven’t had the cats chew on power cords, though that was an issue with my guinea pig, Pigwick. Christmas evening, my ex and I were playing with our brand new PS2, with the cats and Pigwick cuddled around us, and suddenly my controller stops working. Whilst sitting there peacefully, or so I thought, Pigwick was chewing through the cable. I’m really amazed that he didn’t electrocute himself.
When I said “power cords” I was referring to extension cords and the like, that actually carry 120VAC. I think animals’ heightened senses must allow them to detect the AC current in the wires, so they instinctively avoid them (except mice, who seem to LOVE chewing on power lines in the walls). Our dog will (and does) chew on just about anything and everything, but he has never once tried to mess with the cord on his heated water dish. We tried putting heat tape in the floor of his dog house. He was very curious as to what we were up to, until we plugged it in, and then he wouldn’t go near it until we took the tape back out.
Headphones and game controllers are different, in that they don’t have AC voltage running through them, it’s all DC voltage. And your PS2 controller probably doesn’t have enough current running through it to electrocute a mosquito, so your piggy was in no danger of being electrocuted. But I suppose that wires on their own, even if they’re not connected to anything, still pose a danger to animals.
I have seen enough veterinary photos of cats who chewed through power cords and were permanently maimed/burned. When we first got our cat Joy, she showed an interest in chewing power cords. We immediately went to the pet supply store and bought a spray bottle of Grannick’s Bitter Apple (a taste deterrent made for dogs) and sprayed it on the power cords. The next time she tried, she got a “This isn’t fun at ALL” expression, and has never bothered the power cords again!
Great PSA…let’s not forget those plastic rings that come off the cap of milk gallon jugs. I make sure they get buried in the trash. The caps? Hundreds under the stove and refrigerator.
With our cats, I haven’t been able to do much sewing… More for fear that they’ll try and jump into my lap and land on the sharp end of a needle. But one of my hobbies is weaving bullwhips out of paracord. That becomes quite an adventure as all 3 cats decide that ALL the string belongs to them, and will pounce and sit on each strand as it is pulled through.
Elvis looks a bit like a rock star on stage belting out “Can a blanket love” to the crowd. Maybe you could make a song out of his Can a blanket statements.
My boy is like that. He’ll sit on mom’s sewing, pull out pins, try catching the scissors (yikes!), and generally be a nuisance. Mom has to do all her sewing and pattern layout in the sewing room, now, which doesn’t have as much space.
My little girl just goes after knitting yarn, which is always put away unless we’re using it. She’s not bold enough to climb into our laps to get at it, though. *whew!*
What I especially liked about this strip: the seamless switching between the “guys'” point of view and the human point of view. To the cats, it’s a news story, to the woman, it’s reality of spools getting batted around, Puck sitting on the blanket, Elvis in the cradle. The other thing that tickles me is that though cats and woman are intentionally cartoonish, Baby is not. Those are gorgeous paintings of a gorgeous baby.
The problem is that cats CAN’T stop eating thread, floss, or yarn once they have started. Unlike humans they can’t just gnaw off at some point. So if your cat starts on a spool of thread s/he will have to ingest the whole thing.
I lived for 18 years with a Siamese named Mai Ling. Their guarding instinct is amazing. Woke up in the middle of the night to a sound that could only mean some wild and VERY large creature had gotten in and was laying at the end of the bed. Turned on the light to discover the noise which was actually shaking the bed was coming from my little 11 pound Siamese. I discovered the young guy who lived upstairs had come home drunk and miscounted the floors on his way up and was trying to put his key in my lock. A quick shout helped him figure out his error and the growling stopped from Mai Ling. But honestly, the sound would have done an Irish wolfhound proud. She was fierce!
Wow! I actually just read this comic (it was like finding a rococo chocolate I’d forgotten about)! 😀 And actually, this advice is going to come very much in handy because I know my mother is an avid seamstress and her kitty Tinkerbelle (totally NOT at all as sweet and innocent as her name – “Tigress” would have been a better match!) likes to play around her sewing stuff . . . I better warn her. Thanks for the warning advice Georgia! I love Lupin’s coy retort in the last panel. 😉
Discussion (79) ¬
Today’s strip is 3 parts humor, 1 part PSA. This past year my friend’s cat became ill and when x-rays were done the vet found the cat had attempted to swallow a needle. She found out that many cats will take a threaded needle and chew, chew, chew the threaded part all the way to the needle itself. She was warned not to leave threaded needles out. Until she told me this, I had a habit of pinning my needles to the fabric of a project I was working on (I know a lot of sewing folks share this habit!) Now when I pause during a stitch, wherever I am in a project, I cut and knot the thread and put the needle away. When I thought of doing a strip on the boys investigating Gwen’s new blanket, I thought I’d slip the advice in, and explain here in the comments!
The best news is her kitty recovered and is healthy now, and we can learn from that experience and keep our kitties safe too! I have been grateful to her for sharing this advice with me since it happened.
Thanks for calling attention to this. It’s not just the needle that can cause problems… my vet warned me that thread can wrap around and even cut through the intestines (sorry for the unpleasant image, but better safe than sorry). I had never worried about it (my previous cats showed no interest in thread), but then I had a cat with pica behavior (eats non-food things) and had to learn to put my clipped threads directly in the garbage; once I found her slurping down some heavy nylon upholstery thread and managed to get it back just in time! I have another cat that loves to chew on rubber bands and paper clips, so I take those away from her in case of something similar happening.
Absolutely agreed! My cats have always attempted to ‘eat’ any thread like stuff around the house. I had one who would cruise the trashcans and pick out stuff like floss or the plastic strip from cigarette packs and eat them. I learned to toss all that kind of stuff into the under the sink trash or flush it. And you’re right, Sue Ellen…it can wrap around their intestines and it’s fatal! You just never know what the heck they’ll find interesting to chew on!
Clueless Morgan used to eat the ribbons off helium balloons. I believe he thought they were grass. 🙂 No more balloons!
We have towatch Elvis like a hawk around ribbon! After too many close calls at Christmases and birthdays, I don’t let it in the house anymore.
Lemme just add to the PSA that pet insurance exists, is pretty affordable and easy to figure out, and can help you handle situations like the ones described wherein cats eat needles and have subsequent issues, or eat thread which can also cause some serious (and expensive) problems!
I can confirm that thread itself is a big danger. One of my little guys got into my sewing kit as a kitten and ate quite a bit. He had to have abdominal surgery to remove it and he had to be very carefully monitored because intestinal stitches are very delicate. Fortunately he recovered fully.
Please, please keep threat and needles locked away from cats (and yarn and rubbers bands… anything string-like can be a danger). If your cat starts hiding and vomits, especially bile, check your sewing kit and be sure they didn’t make a raid on it. The quicker it’s caught, the more likely your cat will recover safely!
I’ve had to rescue yarn that a cat was swallowing (they can’t stop swallowing it, is the problem) that had gone far enough down the cat’s throat that the end was starting to disintegrate. (Eww!) Neither of us enjoyed that process.
While we’re at it, some cats ADORE earplugs. They’re just the right size to become kitty-intestine-plugs, and a blocked-up intestine leads right to a lethargic and then very ill kitty. This happened to a friend’s cat while she was out of town. (Someone else was house-sitting, but they had been given my number, as a backup cat-expert-person. I’m really glad they called. Kitty had surgery and was fine.)
We learned the hard way on threaded needles. We hand sewed our wedding attire. Our big fluffy orange tiger,, Tiger, swallowed a thread and needle. We took him to the vet when we got home from the wedding ceremony, to find him on the floor in obvious distress. Took him to the vet, where the x-ray showed the swallowed needle. He didn’t make it, passing as they attempted to remove it. I still, 19 years later, miss him terribly. He’d adopted me almost as soon as I moved in with my soon-to-be wife. He was my big fluffy cuddles. A cat can never be replaced. You can, in time, find another fluffy cuddles, but it’s not the same, and the cats that have adopted me since, have not filled that void. Two have in time, left their own voids as time, (and diabetes on one) took their toll. I wish cats could live as long, or longer, than we do.
I love how protective Elvis has become of “his girl.” 🙂
1 of our late, beloved cats had some mouth & gum issues. She always recovered. Vet ruled out needles as a priority. CAUTION!
I love Puck’s question! And I’m glad the real life kitty for the PSA is fine now.
Yes! I’ve had to pluck needles out of the throats of two of my cats! it was sooo scary!
ps- my cats insist on laying right on top of whatever i’m sewing – sometimes even attacking the needle in the sewing machine – they live dangerously too =)
Ah, cats and sewing. My scariest moment was when my cat sat down on a project that I had just pinned together, and proceeded to start pulling all the pins out with her teeth and trying to eat them! Thankfully I managed to get them all away from her. Now she contents herself with being the world’s fluffiest and least useful pattern weight 😉
My cat does this too! Except he doesn’t eat the pins, he just likes to pull them out. O_o
Yeah, i’ve learned to hide lots of cat-inappropriate tools. Pincushion, iron (only fascinating when hot), yarn, etc.
I recognise your own-design fabric there, Georgia!
Wish I’d had that PSA a ways back. My holstein cat (black and white splotches) decided she wanted to try embroidery floss and sucked the needle down as well. This happened on a Sunday, the vet I called evidently didn’t believe me and suggested I feed her mineral oil and keep an eye on her. The next day her throat abscessed (where the needle had lodged) I took her to a better vet and after a week she was mostly recovered although her voice was ruined. Thread, floss, presumably yarn, it evidently all looks like spaghetti to them.
I didn’t know that about cats and threaded needles. I too used to weave the needle in when taking a break. No more!
But the real question of the day, can a blanket Love!?!?
Lol!
That is the real question of the day, but as yet we have no answer.
I feel that Elvis’s impassioned question deserves a forthright response,
but I’ve no idea what it is. What do reports say?
Good PSA though
Aw, I love this. I never knew how dangerous sewing needles could be until Jack tried to eat one.
I am so, so glad you told me!! I never would have thought of it! I had to try and slide it into one of the strips somehow, for other sewing folks out there. 🙂
We had a cat that ate dental floss once. I didn’t know until I saw it hanging out of his butt. I thought it was just sticking to him but he hissed when I tugged it so obviously it had gone through him. I figured I’d dodged a bullet with that one and now we are careful that used dental floss gets buried in the trash.
Much needed PSA. Our O’Malley just loves anything metal — she’ll even carry around lose coins. Let’s be careful out there!
I think, in another life, Elvis would be an attorney.
This is why I keep the door to my sewing room locked… One of my cats will open the door if it’s only shut, but he can’t quite manage to turn the key in the lock.
And in a follow-up PSA: It’s not just needles that are dangerous, it’s also thread and yarn. It can twist around the intestines and block them off which is very dangerous indeed!
Mine have never eaten needles, but more than once I’ve had to pull thread from their mouths and it just kept coming and coming like a magician’s hanky. Just so much slimy, slobbery thread. YUCK!
which is why my sewing/craft room is constantly closed off to the cats… it drives them nuts
Elvis’s yelling face in the last panel is so cute I just can’t be intimidated! But tell him to rest assured that Gwen will find him MUCH more interesting than a blanket sooner than he thinks 😉
Even just thread can be hazardous! One of my cats swallowed about a yard of thread, but he swallowed the two ends and the middle got stuck under his tongue. The vet had to cut it loose from under his tongue and then surgically remove the rest, which was tangled in his stomach. Even after that, he would still go after thread, so now the cats aren’t allowed in the sewing room.
Oh thank you for mentioning the danger of just thread on its own.
My Hecubus (a Puck in looks, a Lupin in spirit) used up two of his lives eating needless thread. Fortunately, both times the vet found the thread wrapped around a tooth and clipped it. The thread passed on its own, and surgery wasn’t required. Both times, the vet (different vets) returned the thread to me, neatly coiled in a little plastic baggie.
My cats used to pull push pins out of the cork board to chew on them. I had to move all of my bulletin boards out of cat reach!
Some cats will chew on and swallow twist ties, so please be careful with these, too!
My cats don’t do needles as a rule, but the young male has a DEFINITE attachment to plastic. More than once I’ve had to stop him from chewing, chewing, chewing…..it’d be amusing if it weren’t quite so dangerous.
Our Chipie loves plastic too, Especially the thick stuff that he can really bite down on. We think he likes the pop as his teeth puncture through it. Unfortunately, he also like to rip well-chewed bits off and sometimes swallow them, so he only gets his plastic under supervision now.
Elvis really has the full “J’accuse!” act down pat in this one! Lupin’s smug grin is perfect, too!
I love that smirk on Lupin’s face and his feet up. But Elvis is the real star. “Can a blanket love?” Priceless.
Loose lengths of yarn and thread can also be dangerous. When I was young, one of our Siamese cats, Big Bad John, once swallowed about a foot of yarn. It went all the way through his digestive system intact. Eventually a small piece was hanging out his backside. It wrapped around the leg of a chair, and when he ran off, the whole length of yarn was ripped out of him. I’ll never forget the horrible yowl he let out when that happened. We rushed him to the vet. Fortunately, it didn’t do any lasting damage, but the vet said he’d had cases where yarn had gotten tangled up inside of a cat’s digestive system with fatal outcomes. From then on, I made sure not to leave any loose ends of yarn where the cats could get them. He also warned about tinsel icicles on Christmas trees.
Also on the tinsel icicles on Christmas trees – totally poisonous, just don’t use them! Mind you, we can no longer have any Christmas tree in our house unless we block off a floor to the cats, because they’ll try to eat any part of it, both RealTree and FakeTree. It’s gotten so stressful that we just don’t have a tree of any kind at all (but then, we don’t have kids, which makes it easier)
Thank you, both for the humor in your strips and for the PSA. I’ve had a very rough week – after I was hospitalized for 3 days, I was only home for 2 days before I had to rush my 16 yo cat to the vet and have him put to sleep because his body was already crashing. He was my Mama’s boy and my protector/nurse cat whenever I’ve been sick, so your little ones are very lucky to grow up with a cat like Elvis watching out for them. Thank you also for brightening my day, I look forward to every one of your strips.
Oh, Christina, I am so so sorry to hear that! 🙁 He sounds like he was a wonderful cat.
“What do you say to reports that every spool of thread is under the couch now” – best reporting EVER!
That was my favorite quote too! 🙂
Cats will eat lots of things, as another of your regular admirers Ayshela will confirm, A woman we both know had to brig her cat for surgery after eating a bra strap. Lesson, I guess, is constant vigilance. BTW, the cat, Boris the Beast – adopted from Purrfect Pals – is now fine, if not exactly contrite.
Great strip as always!
Good work on the PSA. In other news, ROFLMAO!!!! “Can a blanket love?!?” “I like to live dangerously” Oh my goodness! The futility of needlework around cats!
Does anybody use sewing machine bobbins anymore? My next door neighbor’s cat was saved at the last moment when she had swallowed a bobbin full of thread, the leading end of which was wrapped around her tongue. Tongue slowly pulled in the direction the bobbin was headed, if you get my drift. Discovered at the very last possible moment to save her, so a happy ending ensued. We all learned the lesson about how dangerous the equation is of cat + thread. Thanks for the reminder!
People must think we’re nuts when we come over because there are pin cushions up high on the book shelves. My boyfriend and I are both historical costumers, and this is the only place our boys wont’ get to them!
They dont’ seem to want to eat them, but they are obsessed with pulling them out and I can just see where that could go wrong….
Daw, Elvis! Mom knows better than to saw anything with cats in the room. Forget needles ad tread, all the batting keeps anything from getting done! Cute though.
So the cats are locked out of the bedroom and Elvis isn’t allowed in the cradle? I don’t like this continued erosion of the cats’ rights with the arrival of the new baby. 😉
I have a plastic munchkin, and a hair nibbler…Pica is a real and present danger, so we have to be as aware with our pets as we are with small children and keep all potential hazards out of their reach! I knit, and all of my yarn and supplies have to be safely stowed when not in use.
Thanks so much for the head’s up, Georgia! I’m not big on sewing, but the odd times when I do I have been known to walk away from the work for a few minutes – I won’t do that again! One of my late beloved cats, as a youngster, managed to swallow an unblown-up balloon, which terrified us all; fortunately, the rubber/plastic/whatever-it-is passed through her intestinal tract completely intact, as proved by litter-box evidence. Scary enough to make sure never to leave balloons unattended (though we already knew that about ones that are blown up – cat claw, KaPOW! – cat under bed! And yeah, I agree with Elvis, “Can Blankets LOVE????”
The plastic is utterly maddening. Lionel will race like a maniac at the chance of a dry cleaning bag, which also appears to be the most poisonous.
I feel so fortunate that my guy only plays with string and thread. Makes tying my shoes a challenge some mornings, but all that he chews the laces, he doesn’t swallow them. I do need to keep hm out of the shop area when I’m working, though, as hot and sharp toys don’t go well with an adventurous feline. (I am an electrical engineer, and do machine work as well)
after i use dental floss i roll it into aroudn my fingers so i can make one cut and it will be in a bunch of very short pieces in the trash. I do similar things with leftover bits of thread or yarn.
Years ago when my sister and I were transporting horses from the mid-west to the west coast (where she lived) she had taken on the task of making curtains for the horse trailer sleeping compartment. Suddenly one of her six month old kittens had blood in her mouth … she was sure she must have taken in a threaded needle. After much angst, and probing it dawned on me that little Bo Peep was loosing her baby teeth ! No needles were involved.. It does remind us tho that threaded needles and small animals do not mix well. On another note: great strip Georgia. You are amazing! Hugs
One of my cats–surprisingly, the less naughty one–is obsessed with stringlike items. Last year she had to have an emergency endoscopy because it became obvious that her ongoing GI issues were due to eating foreign objects. The nice emergency vets removed multiple hair elastics, a length of string, and a shoelace from her stomach. She was very lucky nothing had moved into her intestines.
(Yes, I watch her like a hawk now, but I often wonder what I might have missed that she’s found.)
One of my cats, Orion, loves to chew on the ‘crunchy’ plastic that is wrapped around things like bottles of cold medicine, or sauce. He never eats it, but apparently he likes the sound it makes when he chews on it.
Thread and yarn, especially acrylic/nylon/polyester yarns, can be very dangerous to cats. I knit catnip mice, but only out of cotton yarn, which at least has a chance of being dissolved in the stomach, but so far I’ve been lucky that none of my cats has tried to eat it.
Also be very careful with ribbons for wrapping presents, and with tinsel. Those are very dangerous for cats.
But they will eat anything sometimes. One time, my late, lamented Malachi, when he was only about 3, (he lived till he was a week short of 18) ate the plastic absorbent thing that goes into packages of meat one buys at the grocery store. It definitely passed, and I discovered it when I did the litter boxes.
At the risk of squicking you all, have any of you ever discovered that your long hair has been ingested? Mine is short now, but when I could sit on it, I would.. er… nevermind.
My persian, Porthos, got a hold of one of my mothers threaded sewing needles once. @_@ It got stuck in his gums and we had a nasty time holding him still while my mothers boyfriend got it out with a set of pliers. x.x Every one of us was either bit or scratched but at least my fuzzy snuggle bug is still around to this day and for that I am eternally grateful. :3
Don’t know that we’ve ever had a cat try to eat needle and/or thread around here, but we’ve always kept that stuff tucked away in sewing boxes anyway, so they probably just have never gotten the chance.
We did learn very early on, however, that we had to keep cords (particularly headphones – they never went after any power cords) out of our cats’ reach. They didn’t actually try to eat any of it. They would just chew thru the cord and leave us with the remains.
My Hazza will dig through my purse to find my headphones! I’ve had to get a little zipped bag to keep them in, and sometimes he’ll steal that and hide it around the house (I’m assuming until he learns how to work a zipper!)
I haven’t had the cats chew on power cords, though that was an issue with my guinea pig, Pigwick. Christmas evening, my ex and I were playing with our brand new PS2, with the cats and Pigwick cuddled around us, and suddenly my controller stops working. Whilst sitting there peacefully, or so I thought, Pigwick was chewing through the cable. I’m really amazed that he didn’t electrocute himself.
When I said “power cords” I was referring to extension cords and the like, that actually carry 120VAC. I think animals’ heightened senses must allow them to detect the AC current in the wires, so they instinctively avoid them (except mice, who seem to LOVE chewing on power lines in the walls). Our dog will (and does) chew on just about anything and everything, but he has never once tried to mess with the cord on his heated water dish. We tried putting heat tape in the floor of his dog house. He was very curious as to what we were up to, until we plugged it in, and then he wouldn’t go near it until we took the tape back out.
Headphones and game controllers are different, in that they don’t have AC voltage running through them, it’s all DC voltage. And your PS2 controller probably doesn’t have enough current running through it to electrocute a mosquito, so your piggy was in no danger of being electrocuted. But I suppose that wires on their own, even if they’re not connected to anything, still pose a danger to animals.
I have seen enough veterinary photos of cats who chewed through power cords and were permanently maimed/burned. When we first got our cat Joy, she showed an interest in chewing power cords. We immediately went to the pet supply store and bought a spray bottle of Grannick’s Bitter Apple (a taste deterrent made for dogs) and sprayed it on the power cords. The next time she tried, she got a “This isn’t fun at ALL” expression, and has never bothered the power cords again!
Great PSA…let’s not forget those plastic rings that come off the cap of milk gallon jugs. I make sure they get buried in the trash. The caps? Hundreds under the stove and refrigerator.
I just love Elvis in this strip, Gwen’s Knight in Shining Armor! So sweet of him to let her sleep on him.
With our cats, I haven’t been able to do much sewing… More for fear that they’ll try and jump into my lap and land on the sharp end of a needle. But one of my hobbies is weaving bullwhips out of paracord. That becomes quite an adventure as all 3 cats decide that ALL the string belongs to them, and will pounce and sit on each strand as it is pulled through.
Elvis looks a bit like a rock star on stage belting out “Can a blanket love” to the crowd. Maybe you could make a song out of his Can a blanket statements.
Great idea! And the flip side could be Tabitha singing “I am Alpha Female!” or “The Ballad of the Red Dot.”
My boy is like that. He’ll sit on mom’s sewing, pull out pins, try catching the scissors (yikes!), and generally be a nuisance. Mom has to do all her sewing and pattern layout in the sewing room, now, which doesn’t have as much space.
My little girl just goes after knitting yarn, which is always put away unless we’re using it. She’s not bold enough to climb into our laps to get at it, though. *whew!*
Why do get the feeling that Lupin is the center of all mischief?
What I especially liked about this strip: the seamless switching between the “guys'” point of view and the human point of view. To the cats, it’s a news story, to the woman, it’s reality of spools getting batted around, Puck sitting on the blanket, Elvis in the cradle. The other thing that tickles me is that though cats and woman are intentionally cartoonish, Baby is not. Those are gorgeous paintings of a gorgeous baby.
I just love how Elvis loves the baby!!!
The problem is that cats CAN’T stop eating thread, floss, or yarn once they have started. Unlike humans they can’t just gnaw off at some point. So if your cat starts on a spool of thread s/he will have to ingest the whole thing.
My childhood cat swallowed a needle once. Fortunately she was rushed to the vet and the needle was orally removed and she was fine, but it was scary!
I lived for 18 years with a Siamese named Mai Ling. Their guarding instinct is amazing. Woke up in the middle of the night to a sound that could only mean some wild and VERY large creature had gotten in and was laying at the end of the bed. Turned on the light to discover the noise which was actually shaking the bed was coming from my little 11 pound Siamese. I discovered the young guy who lived upstairs had come home drunk and miscounted the floors on his way up and was trying to put his key in my lock. A quick shout helped him figure out his error and the growling stopped from Mai Ling. But honestly, the sound would have done an Irish wolfhound proud. She was fierce!
Easter grass is also an issue- but last Easter I found paper grass at wallgreens!!
Wow! I actually just read this comic (it was like finding a rococo chocolate I’d forgotten about)! 😀 And actually, this advice is going to come very much in handy because I know my mother is an avid seamstress and her kitty Tinkerbelle (totally NOT at all as sweet and innocent as her name – “Tigress” would have been a better match!) likes to play around her sewing stuff . . . I better warn her. Thanks for the warning advice Georgia! I love Lupin’s coy retort in the last panel. 😉
Ooo, correction! Lupin’s comment in the SECOND to the last panel! 🙂 (I wish we had editing capability on our messages)
Yay! I’m glad the comic could help!