Bengal and the Yarn Creature
My story begins on a Sunday in Atlanta, Georgia, where I, the mighty Bengal kitty, was resting on the back of the couch. My mommy, also known as Erin, was sitting on her end of the couch, quietly cross stitching. Everything was peace and quiet, except for the basketball game that Daddy (Steve, Mommy's DH) insisted on watching on the television, but that's another story.
Mommy often gets thirsty while cross stitching, so she got up to get a coke around 8:45 PM. What did she find? There were no more canned cokes in the fridge, so she put a couple into the freezer to chill down. She set the timer for 30 minutes, so she would remember to remove them before they exploded. Mommy went back into the living room, and decided to rinse out some of the glasses from earlier in the day. She did not want her embroidery scissors to be in the way, so she took them off from around her neck. (She keeps them around her neck, tied with about 40 inches of yarn. Otherwise, she would lose them!) She gently laid them in her seat, so they would be there when she got back, and went into the kitchen.
All that moving around woke me up. I looked at Mommy as she got up, and then looked back at her seat. There sat a long twisted variegated animal called a yarn creature, and it had wrapped itself around her scissors! It had disguised itself as the yarn she usually keeps on those scissors because it wanted to capture her when she came back from the kitchen. "Oh, no," I thought. "Mom always keeps those scissors with her when she stitches, and now they have this white, pink, blue, and green evil animal wrapped around them. I would hate for it to get wrapped around Mommy. I must protect her!"
Stealthily, I crept up on the yarn creature. I pounced and struggled with it, finally killing it. "Now what do I do?" I thought. "I don't want Mommy to have to clean up my mess, even though I did save her from this evil creature. How do I get rid of it? I know, I'll eat it!" And that's just what I did. I picked up a piece of its loop body, sawed it open (so that it was now one long piece), and started eating.
When Mommy returned from the kitchen, she saw me chewing on the yarn animal, with only about 25 inches trailing out of my mouth. She ran over to me and pulled on its body, just outside my jaws. I don't know why she would do that. I was trying to clean up my own mess. She hoped she could pull it all out. But, no such luck. I had sawed through it at another point, and now about 15 inches of it were in my stomach.
I was put into my carrier, packed in the car, and taken to the Emergency Vet Clinic. Sure, fine way to treat her favorite son who had just saved her from the yarn creature. Mommy wanted to get me there before my digestive system started to process it. About a year earlier, Aunt Connie's (Erin's BF) cat had eaten some string. Gabby survived, but the vet told her that string could cause a kitty's insides to tangle up. If they get to tangled up, and they can't fix it with surgery, the kitty can no longer eat and it dies. Mommy was taking no chances with me.
We waited for almost 2 hours to see the doctor. Mommy was very patient with the clinic. Many animals came in really hurt, and we knew they were more critical than me at the time, so they got to go in before me. Some didn't survive, and Mommy and Daddy watched several sad pet owners leave the clinic with only a leash or an empty cage. It was very sad. But, the whole purpose of getting there quickly was to prevent the string from having time to leave my tummy. About the time Mommy started getting upset, they called us back.
Everyone commented on how big I am. I'm only 8 months old (or I will be on Friday), but I already weigh 13 pounds! The doctor decided to give me some baby food, since my tummy was empty when I ate the yarn creature. That was wonderful! I ate every bit of what was in the jar in less than 8 minutes. Everyone probably thought I ate the yarn creature because I was hungry, but I was just protecting Mommy! Anyway, they said something about medication and vomiting. I know what medication means: needles! I was not happy. But, I didn't know what vomiting meant. I do now, and I don't recommend it!
The medicine they gave me was actually an anesthetic. It tends to make cats vomit before they get sleepy. The dosages were by age, up to one year, and then by weight after that. The reason they do that is because most cats don't weigh more than 10 pounds before they are a year old. Well, I do, and they didn't know how much to give me. They decided to give me the dosage for a 13 pound cat, and it worked. The yarn creature's body came up after about 30 minutes. Then, they gave me stuff to reverse the sleepy effects. Because they gave me more than was recommended for my age, they told Mommy and Daddy to watch me for 24 hours. I felt fine, but the doctor said that the medicine takes that long to leave my system, and she didn't want it catching up to my nervous system all at once and putting me into a coma.
Well all of that for $108. Daddy said that was the most expensive jar of baby food he had ever seen. I don't think it was fair since it came back up; it doesn't even count as really eating it! So, we got back in the car and went home. On the way home, they tried to figure out how to watch me, even though they both had to work the next day. Daddy decided to stay home with me in the morning, since Mommy had a conference call at 9 AM she had to take from work. But, Daddy had a bridge deck pour that he needed to supervise at 1 PM. So, Mommy decided she would come home from work after noon, and Daddy could go on to his bridge. We got back home at 1 AM.
After letting me out of the carrier, Mommy went into the kitchen to pick up the food and water bowls (since I wasn't allowed to eat for 12 hours). She noticed little droplets of coke all over the floor. With a look of sheer horror on her face, she opened the freezer door. There was coke all over the inside. One of the cans had exploded while they were gone. With all the excitement over the yarn creature, no one remembered they were in there. No aluminum can could contain coke that had been in the freezer for almost 5 hours.
Well, I was tired, and after my ordeal, I thought Mommy and Daddy might understand if I took a nap while they cleaned up the freezer. They were very mad at me, but I didn't cause the can to explode. All I did was save Mommy, and here she is mad at me. Mommy and Daddy went to bed around 3 AM. Mom got up at 7 AM and went to work. When she got home, she took a 5 hour nap. She was much less mad at me then. I am fine, and there are no more yarn monsters in the house anywhere. Mommy exterminated them all. There is only one more, and it is on her other pair of embroidery scissors. Mommy says that she will be replacing it with a metal ball chain soon. But until then, I am keeping my eye on it!
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