Danger on the Kitty front! (or, The story of the $800 hairball)

This story starts on Wednesday morning. I was enjoying my morning herbal tea and having some toast when Oblioe (my friendly orangce cat, in case you don't know him) hopped onto the seat next to me and meowed. This is when I noticed that there was drool dripping out of his mouth onto the chair. Gross! My response was to push him off the chair and yell something to Chris about how Oblioe was drooling. Later that day, Chris came downstairs and noticed puddles of drool around the house and found Oblioe huddled under the table with a bunch of drool. When Chris asked Oblioe what was wrong (yes, we talk to our cats), Oblioe replyed with an ucharacteristic and abrupt, "mreh!", and Chris immediately whisked Oblioe off to the vet.

It turns out that Oblioe had an enourmouse hairball blocking the lower part of his stomach. This was causing his intestines to become twisted and inflamed. He also seemed very nauseous (hence the drool) and had a lot of poop in his colon. We had thought there might be some sort of string or rubber band that he swallowed, but all they found was a big hairball and a bunch of constipation. They did a surgery and removed the hairball and kept him overnight at the vet. After the surgery, and $800 later, he stopped drooling and now he's home and seems a lot better. He has a shaved tummy with a long slice down the middle. He seems very happy to be back and our little patient is doing very well. It even looks like he's pooping normally again.

When Chris told me he had Oblioe at the vet I almost started crying. I was expecting him to say that the vet needed to put him down or something horrible had happened. I thought maybe he had a stroke and that was what was causing the drooling! Anyway, I'm just trying to imagine something like this happening with our baby. I'd be going insane. If we care this much about a cat, maybe a baby would be 20x worse? 100x? I don't want to think about it. I'd like to think that this wouldn't happen with a baby, because A) our baby won't have fur to lick and B) we will probably take the baby to the vet, uh, I mean the pediatrician, a lot more regularly.