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    Black cat 'Mamba' gets sick from mysterious illness, his pawrents find out that he swallowed over 100 hair ties and needed surgery, and is now recovering with love: 'LOCK UP YOUR HAIR TIES'

    Author image for Blake Seidel
    Blake Seidel • Managing Editor & Brand Manager
    Oct 2, 2025 11:00 AM EDT

    Cats are mischievous little buggers, aren't they? They're always finding something new to nom on, and when we finally get them to stop chewing on our headphones cord, they move on to something else. Then it's toilet paper. Then it's the plastic rings that come attached from the bottle cap. And then, we move on to the final boss of cat chews… hair ties. You have a million of them lying around your house… or do you? Better go check because, as we learned from the story below, they can cost you a pretty penny at the vet's office!

    Meet Mamba, our fuzzy friend below. This gorgeous voidling started by playing with his momma's hair ties, and then moved on to saving them for a snack. He got sick and they couldn't figure out why, until they found out that he had eaten over 100 hair ties and needed surgery. Luckily, they caught it in time and now he's out of surgery and recovering in the arms of his pawrents, filled with love. 

    Those little stretchy circles may not be as harmless as you think. Learn from Mamba and keep your hair ties and strings locked up and away from your kitties!

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      Cheezburger Image 10559178752
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      IDEXX РУСЕ ВЕОПЕРА Е
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    • Wow. We are both impressed and disgusted at the same time. What about hair ties makes them so tasty to our kitties? Is it their shape? It can't be their taste. Purrhaps it's the texture? This may be one of those questions we'll never have answers to.

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      Was quite a week and a half. Fortunately, my void baby is recovering well! These surgical suits work really well in protecting his incision! And I think he looks quite good with stripes
      via skim410
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      RevolutionaryWeb5657 11h ago Mamba heard you refer to him as void and he took that personally! "Void? I'll show you void" activates furry vacuum
      via RevolutionaryWeb5657
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      MPD1987 • 11h ago My girl is a chewer- last summer she chewed & swallowed part of a phone charger cord and got metal stuck in her guts. Cost me $2800 to get it removed. She will also chew & swallow hair ties
      via MPD1987
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      quicker than you can say "ponytail". If I buy her a toy with a string on it, she ignores the toy part and goes straight for the string. I even tie up the blind cords so she won't chew on them. She scares me to death sometimes!
      via MPD1987
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      Cheezburger Image 10559180288
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      WezzieBear • 8h ago SAME!!! But my baby only had 17 Though they were a LOT more clumly, not like individual ones, but like a mass of them tangled together with other sh.
      via WezzieBear
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      My beautiful little idiot is the reason I know only wear chunky scrunchies!
      via WezzieBear
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      Cheezburger Image 10559181568
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      Lil_Fire_Dancer • 11h ago . One of my black cats has feline pica. It's up to us to keep anything and everything that they will eat away from them!! I'm glad your boy is recovering well
      via Lil_Fire_Dancer
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    • Sorry, we thought we adopted a cat, not a hungry-hungry-hippo. Cats are supposed to be carnivores. Where is the meat in the hair tie? Are they secretly meat-flavored and we never knew about it?

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      susabari 10h ago My Tilly chews the wooden knobs off of our furniture and will demolish a shoebox... fortunately she doesn't swallow any of it, just leaves shreds.
      via susabari
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      • toebeantuesday · 9h ago Oh no. My cats play with them. In fact I sometimes will be working around the house and I need to tie my hair back so I just reach under the microwave cart and get one. There's always one
      via toebeantuesday
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      under there. The cat in the basement who works as my mom's nurse leaves me a supply of hair ties in different spots in the basement. It saves me from having to walk up two flights of stairs to my bedroom to get them from where they are supposed to be. I always thought I had a convenient arrangement and didn't realize this could be so dangerous.
      via toebeantuesday
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      I'm so sorry you and Mamba had to go through all of this. I do sympathize because it cost me $8000 on emergency vet care for my mom's cat who ate broom bristles and got sick. He did throw them all up before we
      via toebeantuesday
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      even took him to the vet. Don't ask me what the $8000 was for. It's all a blur. Private equity owned emergency vet care is insane and they pressure sell you when you're at your most vulnerable.
      via toebeantuesday
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      lunacydress • 9h ago OMG. We have a cat that likes to chew things and they disappear, so we have assumed he's eating them. Rarely do we see evidence in the litterbox, so when he was being put under for a dental last year, I had them do an x-ray of his abdominal area just to see if there was anything in there.
      via lunacydress
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      Fortunately, it came back clear. It was $300 for the x-ray, but the dental was like $900 and I figured it was cheaper to find out now that he had a gut full of hair ties or ribbon than when he ate one too many and suddenly it was an emergency. Posts like this make me really glad we did the x-ray.
      via lunacydress
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      • galparadise 12h ago Mamba is so handsome!
      via galparadise
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      . Ready-Influence-1781 · 10h ago My black girlie likes playing with my hair ties. She doesn't eat them. I should be more careful though. Thank you for sharing.
      via Ready-Influence-1781
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      No_Nothing9207 · 12h ago • One of my tuxedos would eat foam
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      MissDisplaced 11h ago So happy Mamba is recovering. So scary! I never had a cat eat hair ties, but my one cat had pica and went after every plastic bag he could get.
      via MissDisplaced
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      arillusine 11h ago • I used to let the cats play with my hair ties until my void had what I thought was a hairball one morning that turned out to be a mass of hair ties. Never saw her eat them. All my hair ties are in a drawer now...and ever since I cut my hair too short for them I'm starting to think this is easier than trying to keep her away from them.
      via arillusine

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    Tags

    black cats adorable voids cute cute cats cat parents pawrents hair care mystery void cats Cats animals
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