Last Updated on September 18, 2026 by admin
If you see thread, ribbon, or dental floss hanging out of your cat’s mouth, the most dangerous thing you can do is reach for it.
Vets call this a linear foreign body. It is one of the few emergencies that is far more a cat problem than a dog problem, and the reason sits at the back of your cat’s mouth.
String rarely stops in a cat’s stomach. It catches around the base of the tongue and stays there while the rest of it keeps travelling down.
Why it happens more than owners think
A cat’s tongue is covered in backward-facing barbs. They strip meat off bone and pull loose fur from a coat, and they move material one direction only — toward the throat.
So a cat that starts chewing a hair tie usually cannot spit it out. It swallows because that is the only direction available.
The household list is long: hair elastics, sewing thread, dental floss, gift ribbon, tinsel, hoodie drawstrings, the plastic tie off a bread bag. According to VCA Animal Hospitals, in an article by Tammy Hunter, DVM and Catherine Barnette, DVM, the base of the tongue is a common anchor point in cats specifically.
What the string actually does
Once one end is stuck, the intestines keep doing their job. They contract, trying to push the free end along, and because it cannot move, the intestine climbs up the string instead and gathers into folds.
The string then saws. Back and forth against the same section of intestinal wall, over hours, until it cuts through.
That tear spills intestinal contents into the abdomen — peritonitis — and it can kill. This is also why Veterinary Partner advises against pulling visible string: if the far end is already anchored in the gut, pulling the near end drags a cutting edge through tissue.
The signs, and the one most owners miss
Vomiting is the obvious one — repeated vomiting, not the occasional hairball that ends with a cat walking off looking pleased with itself.
Then: refusing food, lethargy, dehydration, a painful belly.
But the sign people overlook is the restlessness. A cat with a linear foreign body often will not settle. It lies down, gets up thirty seconds later, moves to another room, lies down, gets up again — or it disappears somewhere it never usually hides and stays there, hunched, not sleeping.
If your cat has stopped eating and cannot get comfortable anywhere in the house, that combination is worth a phone call on its own.
What to do
Do not pull the string. Do not cut it either, unless a vet tells you to on the phone.
Do not try to make your cat vomit. Bringing anchored string back up does the same damage in the other direction.
Take your cat in. X-rays may show a “string-of-pearls” pattern where the bunched intestines gather, and an ultrasound can pick up what X-rays miss. If it is confirmed, the fix is surgery — an exploratory laparotomy, sometimes with more than one incision in the intestine to work the material out.
When to call
Visible string in the mouth or out the other end: go now, not tomorrow morning.
Suspected string plus any vomiting, or a cat that has skipped more than one meal and is hiding: same day.
Cats are built to hide pain until it is severe, so by the time a cat looks obviously unwell, it has usually been unwell for a while.
Two things that prevent almost all of it
Hair ties do not live on the bathroom counter or the arm of the sofa. They live in a drawer or a lidded jar, and so do sewing kits and floss.
Wand toys with dangling string get put away after play, not left on the floor. A wand toy is a supervised toy — the string is the entire appeal, and that is exactly the problem when nobody is watching.
Gift ribbon and tinsel go in a bin with a lid.
If it has already happened
Cats who go through this surgery typically stay in hospital a few days on fluids and pain relief. The stretch vets watch hardest is the first days after the operation, when leakage at the intestinal incisions is most likely.
VCA notes that most cats still doing well 72 hours post-op go on to recover without further trouble. And as veterinary surgeon Karl C. Maritato, DVM, DACVS, writes for MedVet, the longer an object sits in the tract, the higher the odds of perforation and septic peritonitis.
The cat that comes in on day one usually goes home. The cat that comes in on day three is a much harder case.
Does your cat go after hair ties or string? Tell us what they steal in the comments 👇