Could swollowed nipple cause injury in kitten?

I have a question about one of my foster kittens. She's 3.5 months old but is small for her age (the vet says that there is nothing wrong with her though) so in an attempt to make sure she got sufficient nutrition I kept giving her a nightly bottle much longer than she should have been getting it (she really liked it).

About a month ago I was giving her a bottle and like always she was chewing on the nipple. This time however when I took the nipple out of her mouth I discovered that the whole tip had been chewed off and it was gone. I freaked out, trying to check her throat but she had clearly swollowed it. I called the emergency vet asking if there was anything I could do or if I should bring her in. I was told though that there was nothing I or they could do and that I should just keep an eye on her and if she started to vomit or stopped eating I should bring her in. Otherwise it should just pass on its own.
I watched her and she had no symptoms. She ate and pooped just fine. I kept looking for the tip of the nipple to come out but I never saw it. I do have quite a few cats and several litter boxes though so it's impossible to check all the poop. Delilah kept acting normal and I assumed that the nipple must have come out but that I didn't see it.

A couple of nights ago though I found a large pool of vomit on the floor and in the middle of it was something strange looking. I picked it up and looked at it and to my great surprise it was the tip of the nipple that Delilah had swollowed almost a month ago. I even compared it to the piece of the nipple that she had chewed it off and it fit like a puzzle.
I'm really perplexed at seeing it come up after so long and I'm surprised that I've never seen anything wrong with Delilah. I've kept a close eye on her since the nipple came up and she's completely fine. Her poop is normal and she has not vomited again. She eats and drinks fine. I haven't been able to talk to my vet yet due to Thanksgiving and although she seems fine I'm a bit worried that having had this fairly large object in her stomach all this time has caused some sort of injury. What do you guys think? Should I worry or just move on since she seems fine? Could she have some internal injury that she has no symptoms of?

Thanks for any input.

I HIGHLY recommend taking the item and the cat to the vet ASAP... Since she has been fine since you may want to make a call on Monday

I say take it if you still have it as when I began feeding raw I found what I thought was rubber , took it to my vet and was told it was part of an intestine

I'm planning on calling the vet on Monday to see what they say. I just wanted to get some other people's input too.
I'm sure that what she vomited up was the missing nipple tip. It looks just like it and the edge fits the edge of the other piece of the nipple. It's soft rubber so it shouldn't have cut her on the inside or anything. I'm just worried since it's been in there so long. I was pretty sure that it had come out since she seemed fine. I couldn't for the life of me imagine that it was in her stomach all this time.
We'll see what the vet says. Delilah just went potty and it looks completely normal. No blood or diarrhea. She also eats like a horse as always. I just want to make sure I'm not missing anything.

Does she eat "like a horse "and not gain weight

She has been gaining weight very slowly but that was the case before she swollowed the nipple too. I have been trying to figure out if there is something wrong with her since she is so small allthough she has such a good appetite but I don't think it has anything to do with the nipple since it was the same before which is why I kept giving her a bottle. Her brothers are also on the small side but not as small as her.
What's the reason for your question?

Not all parasite s are cuaght by a common fecal nor killed by a wormer ( even a vet wormer) .. but they EAT ALOT and do not allow the host to gain any wt sometimes even to lossing wt

She did have a negative fecal but I've given her the first of two doses of Drontal in case she has tape worm anyway. Is there any other parasite that would cause failure to gain weight?

there are many ... and I would double check that drontal covers all the common tapes that use cats as hosts

Since I do rescue and most of my cats come off the street I'm pretty familiar with the regular parasites that can invade cats and the only one I've ever heard of that can affect weight gain despite normal or more than normal food intake is tape worm. Others could maybe affect the weight since they cause diarrhea but Delilah doesn't have that and she's had two fecals that other parasites would usually show up on. Her brothers has also had fecals that were negative.
Fortunately Delilah could only have been infested with one kind of tape worm since she has never eaten the stomach of rodents or rabbits, etc. She could only have gotten the kind that comes from fleas since she did have fleas when she came. I've had her since she was a day old so I know what she's been up to in her life. I feel pretty confident that the Drontal will take care of any possible tape worms she may have. If there is some other parasite that you know of that would not show up on a fecal and not be treated by Drontal please let me know and I'll bring it up with my vet.

Thanks

there is one but her issues do not match it ...

Kudos to you taking in a day old kitten

Was Delilah's mother young? Sometimes young mothers can produce some tiny kittens that just stay smaller cats.
With DNA in humans (I'll assume it's the same for other animals, too) all the rough stuff gets coded in and causes flaws. Say, you smoke and do a lot of drugs but quit and later have a baby - those flaws will be in the DNA. I suspect the hard life of a few gens of ferals gets coded in as less than perfect DNA.

Another reason a cat can be smaller is underlying heart issues, but surely a vet would catch this.

Some cats just stay small. Time will have to tell.

Originally Posted by Lizita

She did have a negative fecal but I've given her the first of two doses of Drontal in case she has tape worm anyway. Is there any other parasite that would cause failure to gain weight?

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I don't know if she's been in contact with any of your other rescue kitties, but if there's been round worm or hook worm in the house within the last year, she could have round worm or hookworm. Round worm could definitely affect weight gain. Hookworm more likely causes anemia. Drontal definitely doesn't treat round worm - I don't know about hookworm.

She was dewormed with Strongid (for hook and round worm) twice so that shouldn't be an issue. I deworm all my new kitties before they get to mingle with the others and I also deworm all of them regularly so hopefully I don't have any worms in the house.

I was reading up on different kinds of dwarfism that can affect cats and there is one kind called "petuitary dwarfism" that does keep a cat very small but proportional and I'm wondering if maybe she could have this. Then again her brothers are also small so maybe it is just something genetic. I don't know anything about their mom except that she was a stray and had had another litter a few months before Delilah and her brothers were born. For some reason she disappeared when the kittens were only a day old and I got a call asking if I could take them. Luckily I had a mom cat that had four week-old kittens and she took on these three too and raised them with my help (supplementing the feedings). The mom cat's four biological kittens and another little single one that she also raised are all normal size.
Delilah is almost four months old and she does not yet weigh 2 pounds. She's not a least bit skinny though and completely healthy. The vet just thinks that she's petite. I'm hoping that she will have a late growth spurt and will become a small but normal adult. I've chanced her diet recently and I'm hoping that it will have some impact on her.

Well there certainly are small kitties out there! The Russian Blues are very petite. So she and her littermates just may be genetically dainty!

I was just responding to the question asked earlier, and only drontal had been mentioned.