so sorry for your loss. My cat Zoe had surgery for this, while the other cat Waldo ate hair elastics that led to his need for surgery.

thanks for the idea of attaching all the snips of thread to an adhesive surface...I will do that now to be extra safe because as others of you have mentioned they are snoopy and too dumb to know what causes problems for them!

I keep a clothing sticky roller close to my sewing so I can just stick snippets on it. Then when I finish sewing I roll everything and clean up all the "loose ends".

I'd like to add another caution about pets eating stringlike objects. When I get done flossing my teeth I take the floss and double it up several times and tie it in a double knot to make a compact package before discarding it. The pets like to investigate what's in the trash can, and I'm sure the floss retains aromas that interest them. It's not the fact that it's string that causes stomach/intestinal damage, but if it's of sufficient length to get wadded up into a ball too big to pass, or cause problems as its length meanders and gets caught along the loops and turns of the bowel causing constrictions.

I remember a story that Eryl Flynn told one time. He used to go visit his grandparents out in the country. He liked to play with the geese. He got a piece of fat and tied a string around it. A long string. Then fed it to a goose, who excreted it and another goose swallowed it and so on till all the geese were attached with the same piece of string running thru them.