Prufrock String-Eater

Prufrock trying to pull some vagrant threads from the curtians

Prufrock loves eating string. In an earlier post I mentioned how she doesn’t really care much about food. That’s not entirely the case: she likes treats and she likes string—anything she can get her whiskers around. Tiny nylon threads fray off the edge of the curtain (buy fabric, ringlets with clamps, curtain rod, easy curtains) and Prufrock gets it in her head about twice a year to get some of those threads in her tummy.

When she was a kitten she was all about the elastic that made up April’s bra straps. We became very good about picking after ourselves (at least in the bra department—low-risk items could be left on the floor unmolested). No bra strap was safe. Anything unguarded was chewed through by the time we found it. I don’t think she ever swallowed much. To get anything down she’d have to chew through one part, swallow some, and bite down to free the elastic from the rest of the garment. This isn’t to say that she was never successful; we found bits of elastic in the litter box, just not as much as we’d expect from all the carnage Pru brought against April’s underwear drawer.

As Prufrock grew older her tastes matured. She moved on from elastic, her refined palate now preferring yarn. April is a knitter. We have a lot of yarn. A lot. About the apartment there are many unfinished knitting projects. The yarn floweth freely and Prufrock doth partake. Unlike with the elastic, it was easy to catch Pru in act of chomping down some yarn. We wouldn’t see her for a few minutes, and then one of us would hear a strange licking sound from behind the couch. April would jump up, scolding, and Pru would attempt to flee, yarn and skein unspooling behind her. Once caught, one of us would hold her as the other pulled lengths of unbroken yarn from her throat and stomach. On one unfortunate afternoon we had to perform this same operation but from the other end.

We were concerned, of course. At all of her checkups we had the vet feel her stomach for anything troubling. There was never a problem. In 2010 Pru had a bladder stone removed, and since then she’s cooled it on the string eating. As evident by the photo, she does get a hankering for thread, but it’s usually the thin, spindly stuff. In the four years we have lived in Massachusetts, she has rendered only one bra inoperable.