A Story About String

Louis, the cat, has learned an important lesson this week (hopefully). Eating string is bad for you. On Saturday he found a roll of string on the table. First off, he should not be on the table. He knows this is against the rules. Second, he should not knock the string onto the floor. Third, cats (or any other creature) should not eat string. Yes, I know... I should've put the string away in a safe place. But the table usually is a good place to leave things unattended... Except babies and important things like that. Anyway, Monday night Louis came running like a mad-man out of the basement, where his litter box is kept. Hmmm. The poor little guy had a string, about three inches long, hanging out of his rear. No wonder he was distraught. We tried to help him out but the string wasn't going to be pulled out with gentle tugging and we knew better than to try anything more than gentle tugging... Especially since he cried when we tried. This wasn't going to be good. I knew string could be very bad for cats but it was after 8:00pm and all the vets in the area are closed. While Adam is trying to help our little Louis, who is now walking around kinda funny, I call around to find out what we should do. Then Louis is throwing up is the basement... Not good. I might cry...Except I had just gotten through to the emergency vet place in Rochester and I had to explain what was up to the nice lady who knew what to do. Which wasn't much, except to monitor his eating, pooping and throwing up. (We didn't want to see anymore of the latter.) He seemed a bit better after puking and we decided to wait till morning to see how he was. Adam was pretty sure I should take him to the vet in the morning, so after calling around to different vets (because we don't have one yet) I finally found one who could see him in the morning. They poked him and looked in his mouth, tugged at the string and said he seemed okay, but to watch him for any puking, make sure he was eating and pooping, and call tomorrow if he wasn't doing what he should be. Or we could get an x-ray to make sure there was no bunching in the intestines, for only $80. I opted for the watching option. Running short on time, as I was supposed to be at work at 10:00, I left the poor little cat (who was now very grouchy because of being poked and prodded) at my Mom's house. Turned out, he was very naughty at Mom's and hissed and growled at everyone. So he had to be locked away in my parent's bedroom.When I came to get him, I was quite disappointed to see he hasn't eaten or gone potty and is very agitated with everyone, including me. But after bringing him home, he seemed to settle down quite a bit... Especially after a long cat nap behind his favorite chair. After more absence of poop in the litter box and only a couple bites of food all evening, I was expecting to have to go back the vet today and have the expensive x-ray taken. But after Adam woke up this morning he called a cheerful greeting of "Louis is okay!" to me, who was still in bed. So take heart. String does not always mean expensive lab testing, surgery or x-rays. Sometimes you must just wait the string out. Even if it is almost ten inches long.