Ribbon Warning!

With the holiday season approaching, I just wanted to remind everyone about the dangers of ribbon & share my recent scare.

I received a package last week with 2 pretty ribbons almost 1 inch wide & 3 foot long. As usual my cats were very interested in the new package & played with the one of the ribbons for awhile. I thought that I threw them away & forgot about it. Four days later I found a bundled heap of ribbon in some vomit. I didn't know which cat had swallowed the ribbon, but soon realized that it was Jazzpurr because he continued to vomit, plus I weighed him & he had lost over 2 pounds!. I immediately called my vet's office & since it was around closing time the receptionist said they call me 1st thing the next morning. The vomiting got worse, Jazzpurr wasn't keeping anything down, so I called the vet at his house & he told me to meet him at his office right away. He started him on an IV & meds right away & took an x-ray. From the x-ray, Jazzpurr's intestines looked bunched up, like he may have still had something in there. They did exploratory surgery the next following morning & thankfully there was no obstruction & everything looked fine.

Jazzpurr's home now & recuperating form the surgery. It's so scary to think that I could have lost him over a ribbon! I heard about the dangers of small items, needles, thread, pieces of yarn... but, I never dreamed that one of my cats would swallow a 3 foot ribbon! I don't know if Jazzpurr learned a lesson from his ordeal... but I sure have! I will definitely be more careful about what I leave out in the future!

Here's my boy showing off his boo-boo.


He's doing great, these were taken today.
The bad ribbon that nearly did him in...


Luckly, the worst of his adventure is a big scar & a bad haircut.

I'd like to add hair ties, hair elastics, rubber bands, & scrunchies to that list...I can't even count the number of kitties that had exploratory surgery to remove those items during the 3 years I worked at a vet clinic. Dental floss, too.

Amanda

.....and the Ribbons that you use to wrap presents, the curling ribbons, they swallow those and the tinsel that you put on christmas trees.....etc, etc...

Oh my! I'm so glad he's doing better!

Thanks for posting this. I never thought about dental floss. It always seems to miss the trash too! I'll be more careful about that one from now on!

I've had some very bad experiences with Holly and ribbon. Please do be careful folk.

All the grass you get in easter baskets too. Holidays are so bad for kitties. My Tara had a blockage last easter. My mother had gotten me an easter bucket, and it was so stuffed with goodies, I didn't see any grass in it, so i left it out on the kitchen table when I went to church. Came home to find all the goodies dumped all over and Tara munching away on the grass. She apparently ate a lot of it, because she had a very large, very expensive blockage.

My dad always puts tinsel on the tree at christmas. One year my dads ex gf pulled a very long piece of tinsel out of my cats mouth, and her thoat. Im afraid that this year, our newest cat Peaches, who is very curious, will swallow a piece. I can try all I want to tell my dad not to use Tinsel, but he always does what he wants without any thought of what could happen.

Originally Posted by xpiercedgoddess

My dad always puts tinsel on the tree at christmas. One year my dads ex gf pulled a very long piece of tinsel out of my cats mouth, and her thoat. Im afraid that this year, our newest cat Peaches, who is very curious, will swallow a piece. I can try all I want to tell my dad not to use Tinsel, but he always does what he wants without any thought of what could happen.

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Get him to sign a document saying he will pay for any surgery required on your kitty if it eats the tinsel and gets very ill.

That's a great idea! I think im gonna try that! lol

My cats are facinated by shoelaces and twist ties so watch out for those too. I am also a cross stitcher so I have to be very careful on where I leave my embroidery thread, the cats love it too.

Had a little scare last night myself. I was reading in my sisters room, and Puzzle was hanging around me like a bad smell having just come back from the Cattery. So she was sniffing around, and I noticed her sniffing at a few strands of ribbon left over from Mums wedding on the floor. I told her off when she opened her mouth to start chewing. She tested me out again and I told her off, and she wandered off and sat down. I didnt think anything of it and seeing as I could see the ribbon out of the corner of my eye, I just left it there. My mistake

About ten minutes later I caught her chewing the ribbon. Growled at her, but she ran under the bed, so I got down and tried to shoo her out but she wouldnt budge. Panicing a little at this stage, not wanting her to swallow it. So I just reached as far as I could under the bed and managed to pull the ribbon out of her mouth. I ran my fingers down the ribbon just to see how much she had in her mouth and it was quite a lot.

It could have been a lot worse, and I've learnt my lesson!

I'm so scared now! I have two little boy kitties, Andy and Amos, who are about 9 months old, and we had a piece of green ribbon laying on the floor. I picked it up and put it out of their reach several times but my younger brother kept playing with it with them.

Well today Andy was chewing on it and we made him stop and a little later he was chewing on it again and then before we knew it, we couldn't find the ribbon. I said "Where did the ribbon go." And no one know. My dad didn't think Andy ate the ribbon but we couldn't find it anywhere.

He's been acting fine. Eating okay and drinking, running and playing, and seemingly using the bathroom okay. There is no sign of the ribbon in his stool, but he hasn't been vomitting or acting strange at all.

I'm going to do a check for the ribbon again all over the house today to see if he hid it somewhere and I'm worrying for nothing but after reading the other stories, I'm scared to death that something is going to happen to my baby. I don't have enough money to pay for 1000 dollar surgery and I don't want to have to take him to the vet for a false alarm but I'm afraid.

My dad said when he lived on a farm, they had these spongey filters that were about the size of dvd case that the collected milk with after they milked the cows and he told me the cats would eat the WHOLE spong and then poop it out dry after they absorbed the milk. He said that if Andy did swallow the ribbon that it should be fine because it wasn't extremely big maybe 7 or 8 inches (not like the 3 foot ribbon from one of the stories above), and it as a slick type of material.

I'm scared! What do I do... he's not acting any different than he normally does!

I would just watch him closely.

Diesel has eaten a few pieces of ribbon accidentally, but has thrown them up again a while later.

Just make sure he is still pooping and check for vomit (They can sometimes do it in places you don't expect!)

Hope your little guy is ok!

Well this morning I woke up and went in the bathroom where my babies sleep, and found the ribbon, where he apparently vomitted it up. Their was minimal vomit and it was watery but the entire ribbon was there and he's been fine so hopefully we're out of the danger zone.

Thanks for your support etc!

I'm so glad that your kitten if okay.
Poor little guy, he just didn't understand that what he thought was something fun to play with could have really harmed him.

OT...but another warning.
Gracie, Lizzie and Annabelle have always played with those rings that come off of plastic milk containers.
Well when we got Elliott I didn't think anything of letting him play with them.

Yesterday I found three of them bitten in half and this morning Elliott had another one in his mouth and was chewing on it until he bite it in half also.
He didn't swallow any of it, but I gathered all of them up and threw them away.

This Girls never chewed on them, but Mr. Elliott had other ideas.
I'm sure Gracie isn't going to be happy when she can't find her milk rings, but I'd rather make her a little unhappy than to have Elliott or any of the other cats eat a piece of that plastic.

Glad to hear that at least he threw it up!

So now you'll have to be extra careful where ribbon is concerned - And they will find it, even if you try and hide it!

In our house we immediately discard any ribbons on packages and cannot have ribbon ANYWHERE around because Sneakers is obsessed with it and will dig it out and try to eat it. I had some ribbon in a closed drawer and someone kepy leaving the drawer open a tiny bit and she knew the ribbon was in there so she kept after it all the time trying to reach into that drawer...
Yes it can be dangerous if swallowed.

My cats have eaten curling ribbon before, and it came out in their poop...or they threw it up. I don't use it anymore, especially if they are around.

glad everything is okay. i bet it was a nightmare waiting.

Years ago, our cat Ziggy gnawed off the string of a yo-yo and ate it. We were lucky he vomited it up very soon after.