My younger cat, Millie loves to play with her cat toys. Every night, she lets me know that it’s time to play by dragging her favorite toy, a stick with a long string and feather at the end to the middle of the room. On Wednesday night, she was having a good time as I swung the toy back and forth. She would jump as high as she could to try and catch the flying feather at the end. Suddenly, when she jumped and landed, she screamed and ran out of the room with dragging the toy that was either stuck around her neck or around her paw. She was crying and screaming as I panicked and tried to catch her. At this point, I didn’t know if the string was around her neck and choking her! I finally stopped her under the dining room table. I saw that the string was wound tightly around her leg. I calmed her down and gently unwound the string and removed the toy. She was traumatized! I was relieved but felt very sorry that this happened to her. I picked her up, pet her and put her in her  bed so that she would calm down. She did and was up and raring to go again in an hour or so.

Be careful when playing with these types of cat toys. They could easily choke or injure your cat as I learned this week. Don’t keep the toys out when you are not playing with your cat. I put my cats string and stick toys in a corner that she cannot get to. In the future, I’ll be very careful with this toy and shorten the string so that I could control it better.