All three of our kitties made trips to the vet this month—and not for routine visits. Early in the month, Lily and Max showed signs of intestinal distress within two days of each other. We considered everything from cat food and their favorite treat recalls to some sort of feline flu. It was not until after they’d both recovered that we think we know what happened. We now believe it was the water they were drinking.
It was a few weeks later, that we discovered the kitchen drain was running slow and occasionally overflowing into an overflow pipe and possibly backwashing into our filtered drinking water system. Yuk. It may have been soap in the water from the dishwasher that made them sick. (We have a soft water system in the house with one spigot spewing only hard water. That’s what I usually give the cats.) Of course, we had the roto rooter guy out and we have a date to have the water filter changed.
About five days after that, Sophie stopped eating. Again, it seemed to be tummy trouble.
It was by chance that we discovered that Sophie, our ribbon-eater, had been chewing on metallic bows on the packages under our Christmas tree. She’s never done that before. We’ve used the ready-made bows for years without her bothering them. We knew that she ate ribbon, though. We had given up using curly ribbon, any type of narrow ribbon, and yarn on packages or decorations years ago because of her. But now she seemed to be eating the ready-made bows, so I hid all of the Christmas gifts in a closet until time to open them.
How serious was Sophie’s symptoms? One day we woke up to bloody vomit. We did not know at the time which cat it came from until we realized Sophie was eating the bows. We are stunned that a cat could survive the type of damage those bows must have caused to her insides. When we discovered Sophie had been eating the bows, we knew which cat had made the horrific mess.
Yesterday, I cleaned out our holiday and general gift wrap and tossed all ribbon and bows. I found a wonderful substitute—sticker bows. These are stickers with pictures of bows on them and they look really nice on gifts. You can stack the packages and they are easier to ship or to tote someplace.
If you have a cat that is attracted to eating ribbon or bows, please don’t use them. Consider using decorative tape or these nifty sticker bows on your packages from now on.
