by Debora (Phoenix, AZ USA)
Cats like hair ties
Cats like hair ties. My son and I adopted a cat a few weeks back. She is about 5 yrs old. She’s a cross Angora, Siamese. Totally cross eyed and very lovable. I noticed a week or so ago that when I went to pull a hair tie out of a basket I have on the bathroom counter, there were none in there. I couldn’t imagine where they all went, until, I went to fill up the cat’s food bowl a while later. There they were. All of them, stacked neatly in her food bowl. I took them all out thinking my boys did it for some odd reason. Then every day I came home that week, they were in there again. I would take them out, place them back in the basket and the nest day they would be there again. I finally watched my cat for a while this evening. She takes the hair ties out of the basket, plays with them a little, and then places them in her food bowl. I wonder why she does this? Any clues?Teresa’s thoughts on cat play things:We have three cats, all of which have Siamese in them. The two males especially really like to play fetch. So I’m pretty sure your cat is just loving these ties.My youngest male cat Rilley loves to play with Q-Tips. He will even knock our waste baskets over and rummage through them looking for a Q-Tip. When he finds the Q-Tip he will carry it around the house batting it around and pushing it under stuff like a rug or pillow so he can find it again.It’s like playing hide and seek with himself. Now if we pick up the Q-Tip and throw it he will chase it and bring it back. He even dives under things to get his toy and carries it proudly back to us,dropping it in our lap.Moe our other male likes the plastic rings from milk jugs and loves to play retrieve with them. They are so funny. Our older female didn’t catch onto this game till she saw young Rilley doing it and know she started batting the Q-Tip around a little also.It’s just funny to watch them. It is hard to keep our waste baskets in the upright position though.As the comments below indicate, sometimes cats and hair ties don’t mix. Many cats will just play with them, but others will find a way to get in trouble with them. As a feline parent you probably know which category your kitty falls into. When in doubt hide those hair ties in a secure location.
Comments for Cats and Hair Ties
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Hair ties by: Jamie My cat will take my hair ties, play with them for a few hours and then stick them in his water bowl. He doesn’t chew them up apart from picking them up in his mouth. In fact, none of them have any wearing on them, really, besides the normal from play.
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Cats and hair ties by: Brandy They all seem to love those pesky hair ties. Beware letting them though. Even when you don’t think they are eating them they very well could be. My cat just recently had a not so fun exploratory surgery where we recovered 12 partially digested hair bands causing a blockage in 2 areas of intestine.
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Cats and hair ties by: Dani I only recently got my cat and have found that he loves hair ties as well. He never eats any of them and after some time gets bored, but if I leave one on the ground he will pick it up and fling it. Sometimes he will even bring them back to me so that I will toss it for him. He’s not the only cat I have had and even my other cat loves to play with them, but not to this degree. She only ever just watched them and would play with them if they were in my hands. I am also curious if anyone has an idea why cats do this.
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Hair ties are bad for cats by: Anonymous Beware of allowing your cats to play with hair ties (or rubber bands, string, etc.). If ingested these materials can ruin your cats digestive system. I mean your cat can die if they swallow a hair tie and it is not removed. I recently took my cat to the vet because he wasn’t behaving like himself and he was vomiting bile…an x-Ray revealed that there were 5 hair ties in his stomach. I do not know how he managed to eat 5 without me knowing. The vet said that inducing vomiting could cause him to regurgitate the hair ties (since they had not made it to the intestines yet), but this process is more difficult in cats. They had to perform surgery.
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Hair Tie Destroyer by: Julia I was honestly beginning to believe that my cat was the only one with this odd habit. She has always likes hair ties so I started buying her her own brightly colored ones so she could find them. That was 2 years ago and she is now close to 4 years old. Over the past year she has begun to put a hair tie in her food dish. If I take it out, she puts one back in. It is always just one. Though, it isn’t just a random hair tie. She only puts the tie in the dish if I have recently worn it, no other hair tie. My husband jokes that the cat views me as “her prey”. I haven’t been able to find anything on WHY she does this. For years she would go as far as to take them off my wrist at night when I’m sleeping. Who knows, maybe there is an animal behaviorist that can explain these interesting habits.
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I thought I had the only cat with some form of ocd by: Anonymous Yep I have a cat that will play fetch with hair ties for as long as I will play with her. Hours if I’m just sitting around having a lazy day. Didn’t teach it to her, she just started doing it one day. She will dig through everything, for example I have a little basket I put my phone, wallet keys in and she’s constantly digging through it just looking for a hair tie. I used to leave them lying around everywhere in places like that until she developed her little habit. Now I have to put them in something with a cover that she can’t get open, and if she sees where I put them she’ll still try. Every once in awhile if she watches me put my hair up she’ll try to take it off my head. I go through a lot of hair ties, because every once in awhile I’ll forget to put it around my wrist in the shower and I’ll get out to find her playing with and I just don’t have the heart to take it away, because she looks so happy with it. I usually buy a pack of ties give her half and literally lock the rest away.
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Cats and Rubber Bands by: Marie & Baby Girl My cat loves to eat rubber bands, she sniffs them out and eats them, I’ve had to be very careful to make sure that we dispose of them right away. Maybe your cat likes the smell of rubber too, if you are referring to the hair ties that have rubber bands in them!
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Mr. by: Mike Jackson My cat likes hair ties more then cat toys!