Care Guides

I was cutting the plastic cobweb off the banister when I noticed the corner was gone and so was Mochi. The strand was still in my hand, the rest of the web sagging where she had pulled it loose, and the cat was under the couch with something white hanging out of her mouth. I pried it out. Most of a cobweb, chewed into a ball, with a look on her face that said she had done nothing wrong and would do it again.

The decorations that actually scare the vet

That was the start of a Halloween I would rather forget. The decorations that seem harmless are exactly the ones cats go for, because they dangle and shine and smell like the craft store, and a cat cannot resist a thing that moves when batted. The cobweb was the easy part. The tinsel on the door, the string of battery lights, the ribbon on the fake pumpkins, all of it is a chew toy with a death wish.

The real danger is not the scare itself but what gets swallowed. String, ribbon, tinsel, and those stretchy cobwebs can pass partway through the gut and then catch, a condition the vet calls a linear foreign body, and it is as bad as it sounds. The intestine bunches up around the thread and can tear. Mochi's cobweb was mostly out, but the worry sent us in anyway, because you cannot see what is already swallowed, only guess.

The vet bill that followed was for an exam and an X-ray and an afternoon of watching her, and she was fine, but the fine part is luck. A friend's cat ate a length of tinsel and needed surgery, and the cost was the kind that makes you reconsider the decorations entirely. I now put the dangly stuff up high where paws cannot reach, and the cobwebs stay in rooms the cat is not allowed during the season, which is one room, but it is something.

The other Halloween hazards are the ones people hand out. Chocolate is poison to cats and dogs, darker being worse, and the little foil wrappers add a second problem if chewed and swallowed. Glow sticks are not toxic in a deadly sense but the liquid tastes bitter and makes a cat drool and paw at its mouth, which looks alarming at midnight. Candy with xylitol, the sugar substitute, is worse than chocolate for dogs and hides in things you would not expect, so the bowl stays in a closed cabinet and the kids know the rule.

Candles in carved pumpkins are a fire and burn risk with a tail nearby, so we switched to the battery ones years ago, and the cat lost interest the moment they stopped flickering with heat. She still bats the fake spider, but it is solid plastic and too big to swallow, which is the only kind of decoration I allow within reach now. Boring is safe.

If your cat does eat something stringy, do not try to pull it out if you can see the end. The vet warned that tugging can damage the inside on the way back up, and the right move is the clinic, not the tweezers. Watch for vomiting, low energy, not eating, or a weird hunched stance, and call the vet even if the cat seems okay, because the trouble with swallowed string is how quiet it stays until it is not.

The doorbell was the other problem that night. Kids in costumes, the noise, the constant opening, and Mochi went from curious to gone in the time it took to hand out one handful of candy. She hid in the bedroom closet and refused to come out until the lights were off, which is a small mercy, because a stressed cat in a crowded doorway is one more way to lose track of what she might swallow. Now the skittish ones get a quiet room with food and a closed door before the first knocker arrives.

The clinic itself was a calm kind of chaos. The X-ray showed nothing stuck, which is the best boring result you can hope for, and the vet kept Mochi for observation mostly to be sure she did not develop a blockage overnight. We went home with a lighter wallet and a stricter rule about anything dangly at paw height. Dogs, I should add, are the bigger candy risk in most houses, because they will eat a whole bowl given the chance, so the locked cabinet rule covers them too.

The morning after, Mochi acted like none of it happened, which is the feline gift for ignoring drama. I found cobweb bits behind the couch for a week, little reminders of the night, and each one went straight into the trash. The decorations came down two days early that year, and they have gone up later and lower-risk every season since. A single scare bought a habit that has kept her safe through several more Halloweens.

The bill bought me a habit, and I consider it cheap. I check every decoration for dangly bits before it goes up, I keep candy where paws and a clever dog cannot reach, and the cobwebs stay out of reach entirely. Halloween is loud and full of strangers at the door, which stresses some cats into hiding and others into trouble, and a little planning keeps the holiday from turning into a second bill. Mochi is eleven now and has not eaten a cobweb since, though she still eyes them.