Today I worked on replacing some window screens. The old ones had fiberglass screen; as the cats (specifically, Fingers) proved skilled at slicing through that, I decided to replace them with aluminum screens. Without thinking of what I suppose might in retrospect have been an obvious eventuality, I worked on the screens where the cats could get at them. And unfortunately, that meant that at least two of the cats (Raedthinn and Buttons) decided that the thing to do was to gnaw upon the resulting thin-gauge aluminum “wires” shed from the screens after trimming. In Buttons’ case, I managed to catch him and grab hold of a wire that was projecting 1/4 inch from his mouth… and proved to be about four inches long. So it was nearly fully swallowed. Who knows if he or another cat might have successfully swallowed some of the wire.
Being aluminum, I wonder if any such wire could survive long in the cats stomach? The hydrochloric acid should convert the aluminum to aluminum chloride and hydrogen; water in the stomach should react with the aluminum chloride to produce aluminum oxide and more hydrochloric acid. Since the aluminum oxide is about as inert as a substance can get, it would seem that hydrogen gas would be the only product of note.
Of course, this assumes that the wire stays in the stomach long enough to get reacted away. If it passes through… I don’t think this will have a happy result. So, I suppose I’m off to the vet in the morning to see what they say to watch out for.
Yay.