For the past year or so, this cat named Louie had been throwing up every so often after meals. Because the cat otherwise ate normally and seemed perfectly healthy, his mom, Anne, assumed he simply had a sensitive stomach.
“I thought to myself that cats
just do that,” Anne wrote. “It was never a daily thing.”
Then, suddenly, it was.
Though Louie continued eating normally and had no trouble using his litter box, his vomiting recently became much more frequent.
“He had begun throwing up multiple times a day,” Anne wrote. “He became lethargic, and I rushed him to the emergency vet.”
Anne was not prepared for what the vet would find.
An X-ray revealed a large foreign mass settled inside Louie’s stomach, appearing to take up a considerable amount of space.
Emergency surgery would be required to remove it.
After a successful surgery, the truth was revealed. Inside Louie’s stomach were 35 hair ties, all of which were carefully removed.
Evidently, the cat had been secretly snacking on them for some time, until they all became too much for his body to handle.
“I was shocked when I found out he had gobbled down 35 hair ties,” Anne told The Dodo. “But at the same time … [I was] not surprised at all.”
When Louie was just a small kitten, Anne had noticed that he enjoyed playing with her hair ties. After a vet warned her that cats might swallow them, Anne tried to be careful to keep them out of Louie’s reach.
But that apparently wasn’t enough to stop him from continuing to munch on them in secret.
Louie is recovering well after the surgery and is expected to be back to his old self again soon — hopefully, minus the hair-tie-eating.
“He truly has the best cat characteristics: curious, mischievous, sweet and silly. By far the best cuddler on the East Coast,” Anne said, adding: “I hope this post will remind my fellow cat owners to keep hair ties away from their kitties! It’s an expensive lesson to learn.”
