vet tales, part III; or, the end of the balloon era

I grew up with a cat that liked to play with balloons, and I was thrilled to find that Tigra also liked to chase and retrieve them. We started off with fully-inflated balloons, which were fun. (Actually, I read on a cat care site that popping a large balloon was a good way to teach a cat to stay away from an off-bounds area, but the sound never deterred Tigra; she's pretty fearless!) Tigra's favorite, however, was a balloon with just a puff of air in it. That way she could easily carry the balloon in her mouth. She was so cute, chasing wildly after a bouncing piece of rubber and then trotting back with it for me to throw again. You'll notice the use of the past tense here.

One day I discovered her chewing on a balloon and, after finding some pieces that had passed through her system, decided that she could only be allowed to play with balloons "under supervision." Unfortunately, she still managed to swallow a balloon. Some vomiting, x-rays, surgery, and a few hundred dollars later, she was fine. Needless to say, we don't play with balloons any more.