Kitten Almost Died

Okay, I may be exaggerating a bit, but last night I was pretty convinced Kitten was dying. 

Kitten has always ground his teeth from time to time, but last night, he went insane. At first I would catch him grinding his teeth here and there and I would yell at him to stop. But he just just kept doing it and it kept getting louder and louder. When I tried to get near him he would absolutely freak out, do one of his crazy mid-air flips and run away faster than I even knew Kitten could run. I tried giving him some treats to see if he would eat. He ate them up just like normal, but as soon as he was done, went right back to grinding. 

I did what I always do in situations where I am convinced Kitten, Boyfriend or I are dying -- I googled it. 

This did not help.

In case you are wondering, cats grind their teeth when they are having trouble swallowing, when they have tooth pain or an oral infection and pretty much any other time they are in some immense type of pain, including: abdominal pain, nausea, inflammatory bowel disease, pancreatic disease, cholangiohepatitis, gastritis, hypokalemia, rabies, bartonella, brain tumors and peripheral nerve neuropathies.

At this point I was going to go with nausea or brain tumors.

After a brief moment of panic, I called the only 24hr emergency animal clinic where I frantically explained to the receptionist that my cat would not stop grinding his teeth. He was very patient and polite, but essentially told me that it might be nothing or it might be something life threatening and that it was my choice to bring him in. Great.

In a last ditch attempt to save Kitten myself before packing him into his bag and lugging him over to the clinic at 11:00pm, I decided to rub his throat. I was pretty sure he was not having problems swallowing, but I figured it couldn't hurt.

While stroking his throat, I saw it. Kitten, the fabulously evolved creature that he is, had gotten a large segment of his neck hair stuck between his back teeth and lodged in his throat. I pulled it out and immediately the grinding stopped. After freeing the hair, a wave of relief came over me, my cat was not dying, he is only intellectually disabled.

This is a picture that I took quite a while ago of a much less life-threatening neck hair in mouth situation.