Live Blogging: Cat Swallows Needle

Posted on Jan 08 in Animals & Pets, Featured, Indoor catby TalinaPrint

Here are my tweets as they played out during the night and early hours of the morning. I didn’t realized it would reach so many people. At first I was just tweeting so my husband would know what was going on, then I kept tweeting to be sure I didn’t leave anyone in the dark. Here is the tweet time line:

January 8th 2010 9:14pm: OMG! I don’t know what to do. My cat just swallowed a needle and thread…

9:16pm: She is gagging and trying to vomit… It’s a freaking needle though. It’s stabbing her insides!

9:29pm: Trying to find a vet now… Have no way to get her there till hubby comes home OMG!!

9:34pm: Fuck, fuck, fuck! I am such an idiot for leaving it out!

9:36pm: We so don’t have the money for this but can’t let her just digest the needle and thread…

9:48pm: Poor kitty, Everly & I are locked in the bathroom waiting for a ride 2 the vet for an ex-ray. Tried peroxide 2 induce vomit, nothing yet.

11:09:54 PM: Hubby just got home, still no cat vomit. Damn it.

11:18:54 PM: Okay, heading out to the vet now. Will update here: http://ow.ly/UseY

11:55:36 PM: Having the ex-ray now…

12:08:25 AM: We aren’t going to be able to save her, it’s $300 just for the ex-ray. That is all we have.

12:25:52 AM: Needle confirmed… $2000 quoted for surgery or we put her down for $350. Its a bad night.

12:49:27 AM: If they would only let us make payments…

January 9th 2010 1:04:01 AM: Still trying to decide what to do.

2:06:20 AM: Back at home and the remaining cats are climbing up the wall. One just got his head stuck in the handle of a paper bag and freaked.

2:07:16 AM: The emergency vet is just like a car dealership… The longer you draw out the ordeal the lower the price gets.

2:08:18 AM: While I cried and we agonized about the decision the gal kept coming in with “deals” lowering the price and sharing other options.

2:09:20 AM: They said they would even offer to save her and place her for adoption afterward as opposed to us putting her down… If we gave her up.

2:11:03 AM: Gabby is having surgery right now & we were given a $500 credit line with the vet (WTF?) and we’ll need to shell out another $400 at pick up.

2:16:35 AM: That’s $1100 less than the initial price we were given… Still tons of money. Should have a call in the next hour about how surgery went.

2:30:11 AM: Vet called, she did well and is recovering. We pick her up at the butt crack of dawn. Time 2 sleep a few hours first

12:14:58 PM: Awake from our daze now. She’s home and doing fine. Looks painful though.

As you can see she’s home and recovering now. We are in the hole financially for it but we couldn’t just lose her. I guess they have that on ya there at the vet. They know you’ll go broke trying to save em so they CAN expect you to shell out that much at the drop of a hat. Insane!

9:00:27 PM: Gabby is resting & has peed once today. Still not eating or drinking much. Gonna give her water in a dropper soon. Don’t want her dehydrated.

10:03:45 PM: Just forced some more water down Gabby’s throat. She still hasn’t had anything to eat or drink.

10:51:36 PM: @Crunchynurse I have some powdered cat milk I was going to make up and try to feed her via dropper. Figure it is better than nothing right?

January 10th 2010

12:16:24 PM: Good news! Gabby is so much more alert and active today. Peed twice this morning. Still no poop or eating on her own tho :-/

7:36:12 PM: She’s drinking on her own and even ate a few chunks of her dry food on her own. She’s a trooper.

January 11th 2010

11:28:19 AM: Gabby brought us her jingle ball and has been running and playing fetch all morning. She’s totally back to normal behavior now. Yay!

In 14 days we’ll have her staples removed and I’ll be sure to NEVER leave a needle unattended again. $900 lesson learned, thank you very much.

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15 Comments

• Veronica says:

  January 9, 2010 at 1:40 am

  Oh honey, hard hard choices. If you really can’t afford it (in your position, I wouldn’t be able to either) put her down and then cry. Lots. I’m so so sorry. I’ll be keeping an eye on both twitter and here.

  xx
  .-= Veronica´s last blog ..Why I’m Bothering With The Trolls =-.
• Veronica says:

  January 9, 2010 at 2:25 am

  Oh that is fantastic. I’m so pleased. Although them being able to drop the price $1100 at will is sus.

  Yay though!
  .-= Veronica´s last blog ..Why I’m Bothering With The Trolls =-.
• Sarah @ Smallslice says:

  January 9, 2010 at 11:51 am

  So they wanted you to give her up and they would perform the surgery for free? Is that what I understood? WHAT THE HECK! Vets can be such a rip off.

  How is she doing now?
  .-= Sarah @ Smallslice´s last blog ..A Diet…Surprise! =-.
• Talina says:

  January 9, 2010 at 12:24 pm

  Sarah: Yeah, that si what they said! Something about an employee discount and she’s such a young cat that they would save her and then adopt her out.

  Why punish us? We are trying to be good owners we came and want to get her help ASAP we just don’t have $2000 to plunk down at the time of services to save her.
• Janelle says:

  January 9, 2010 at 12:39 pm

  So glad she is going to be ok. Sorry it still cost you an arm and a leg. That totally sucks! Keep us updated on her progress!!
  .-= Janelle´s last blog ..3 Random Things & Pictures =-.
• Katie says:

  January 9, 2010 at 2:18 pm

  Oh, I’m so glad this has a happy ending! I was actually sobbing last night hugging my kitties when I was reading your tweets, thinking how badly I felt for you and your kitty Our female got sick about 2 years ago and we found out she had a kidney stone. Don’t remove it, she dies. Remove it, she lives and we’re out a total of $8000 over the whole ordeal (over about 8 months).

  Yeah. We’re broke because of a cat.
  .-= Katie´s last blog ..EcoSMART Winner! =-.
• Heather Jones says:

  January 9, 2010 at 2:40 pm

  What a scary ordeal! My cat Frodo one time swallowed that tinsel stuff on the tree and had to have surgery to get that stuff out. It was only $300 at the time though, not 900 bucks. Good luck!
  .-= Heather Jones´s last blog ..Sick Child!! =-.
• Starr says:

  January 9, 2010 at 3:23 pm

  I’m so sorry to hear about this happening I was on facebook last night and saw I was following the whole thing. Thank goodness she is okay glad they were able to work it out with you even thoughit still cost a ton hope you all are getting some much needed rest!
• Krystal McCarthy says:

  January 9, 2010 at 6:37 pm

  Hearing that Gabby swallowed a needle scared the crap put of me… Monkey is like my baby, how do you not do everything in your power to save them? $900 is a lot of money to spend on a cat/pet, but they are family too.
  I was pulling for her last night! Still am today, as she heals.
  We went an adopted another cat today! She is a 8 month old special needs cat. She only has 3 legs, but I fell in love with her the second I saw her and didnt even notice she was missing a leg.
  We are routing for Gabby! And for your pocket books too.
  .-= Krystal McCarthy´s last blog ..Midnight Meat Train =-.
• Tanya says:

  January 9, 2010 at 8:31 pm

  Thank god she is ok. It’s so hard what to do with pets sometimes. I swear their medical costs are more than a humans.

  I would be mad about them being able to drop the price like that.
  .-= Tanya´s last blog ..Bullies =-.
• teeni says:

  February 5, 2010 at 9:46 pm

  OMG – I totally missed this post! How horrible and what jerks the vets are to put you through all that with the money. It seems such a silly choice to make you decide between highway robbery or putting her down. It makes me so angry. Anyway, I’m glad it all turned out okay in the end and that she is doing better. It sucks that responsible pet owners have to go through this kind of junk. **sigh**
• Melissa N. says:

  February 22, 2010 at 7:13 pm

  The vets were awful! I can’t believe they came back to y’all with “deals” on how to save your animals. Shameful – don’t they know that y’all love that kitty, and didn’t decide to just push a needle down it’s throat? I swear, vets today are horrible.

  I always worry about the same thing happening to our cats, especially since they like to sun bathe in our extra room which has our sewing machine and needles.
• Simon says:

  March 7, 2010 at 9:20 pm

  Glad your cat survived. But some of these comments are so ignorant I don’t even know where to start. First, have you considered the hundreds of thousands of dollars required to become a vet and open an office? They have to recoup the cost somehow. Second, do you have any idea what the actual cost is? Maybe the operation amortized across time and overhead really is $2000 and the vet felt bad and decided to do you a favor and eat the cost of the operation?

  I’ve done stuff like that before, sometimes even pro bono out of the goodness of my own heart and it sickens me to see some of the ignorant responses here. To some of you responding, next time you assume the worst of someone trying to help you at the expense of themselves, I hope they don’t give you any breaks.

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