House and Pet Sitters often comes across interesting and valuable information that is worth passing on to whoever is interested.

For example, Katie Finlay from iheartcats.com pointed House and Pet Sitters to this story about a cat owner who almost lost cat because of a common household item.

The fur-baby in question is Ollie. He was adopted by Ramphasto as a happy, healthy young adult until…

“one day he began throwing up everywhere and eventually just stopped moving. It was at this point I knew I needed to get him to an emergency vet. They did blood tests and x rays and found something lodged inside his stomach and intestines. It was some sort of hard mass. They told me they needed to do an emergency surgery or he would die.” Ramphasto said.

Ramphasto explained how Ollie went into surgery and what they found was a shock. She had no idea that this item could be so harmful to her precious pud.

What the vet found was hair ties. Ollie had eaten so many, they had matted and lodged in his intestines causing a blockage.

“He did survive his surgery thank goodness. When they showed me this bag of hair ties I wanted to hit myself. I felt so horrible for my ignorance. I would see him chewing up my hair ties and I would try to stop him, but I did not see or know he was actually swallowing them. I did not know the severity of the situation.” Ramphasto admitted.

Apparently, this can be a common occurrence i.e. cats swallowing small but strange items like string, elastic bands, wool etc.

Thankfully this story has a happy ending however it serves as a good reminder for cat owners to be aware and vigilant about what your cat plays with, and eats. Yes, sometimes this can be harder to manage than it sounds however a happy cat who has plenty of toys or activities to keep him/her occupied with be less interested in a random hair tie or piece of string.

Thanks for sharing Katie and Ramphasto.