Lucky To Be Alive

Here's an image I can't get out of my mind.
I was stopping in with my friend Eric one night a few months ago. He has two daughters, ages 7 and 4, as well as two identical black kittens, both of the same litter, about six months old.

As we sat talking in the living room late in the evening, after the kids had gone to sleep, the kittens were very active. They were revelling in all the things that the girls had left strewn across the floor for them to play with. One such item was a length of thick red thread, maybe once securing a balloon or something--only it was several feet long. One of the two cats--even Eric said he'd long given up on trying to tell the two apart--for some reason took a real hating to that thread. Jumped all over, wrestled a little bit, and started to eat it. I stood up, went over and grabbed the cat away from the thread, and held it forcefully for a minute or two, to get its attention away from trying to potentially choke itself on thread. Eventually, however, it got away, and immediately ran around the coffee table and resumed the melee with the offensive red thread. Eric reassured me that he didn't expect either cat to live long, since they're clearly not very bright. That wasn't exactly an invitation to leave the cat to its own devices, but I decided not to make an issue of it. Cats play with string and yarn and thread all the time. Right?

A few minutes later, after the conversation had drifted on to the topic of whom to trust in media, one of the cats--they'd both been running back and forth--walked past me, gagging on thread. It trailed a good length of it, as it tried to choke the rest of it down. Knowing that mammals don't digest cotton fiber very well, I didn't want the struggle to end that way. I got ahold of the end of the thread still outside of the kitten, and began to pull. I figured maybe it'd gotten a few inches' worth ingested.

The kitten leaned its head forward as it reluctantly gave up its conquest. I was surprised to get half a foot pulled out of its throat, as Eric made some observation about free press in Venezuela; but the kitten wasn't done yet. I was gently lifting my arm upward, not drawing too fast, for fear of maybe the thread cutting into its tongue, or maybe catching on a tooth. Soon, my hand was almost over my head, and yet the cat continued to dispense string. Like a furry little bobbin. Finally, after my arm was almost fully extended over my head, the last of it spilled out of the kitten's mouth. Fuckin' cat had swallowed over a yard of thread, and was working at consuming more. That's probably not a fatal quantity, but would be a hell of a way to go if it were.

I disposed of the thread in the kitchen trash. I can't stop thinking of the act of pulling on thread and having the cat extrude it. Like a tape dispenser, but it was alive.