This plucky pooch was left feline sick after swallowing FIVE plastic toy cats which vets discovered in these remarkable X-ray pictures.
Snowy, a one-year-old white West Highland Terrier, worried her owner Samantha Reed, 42, when she suddenly lost her appetite and started vomiting three times a day
After extensive tests proved unhelpful, baffled vets took X-rays and were shocked to see the face of a cat peering out from Snowy’s belly.
The cheeky pooch had scoffed a whole family of plastic ornamental felines, a mother, father and three kittens, with the tallest measuring two inches high and an inch across.
Each cat was removed the same day on June 8 during a one-hour operation to cut open Snowy’s stomach and free her of the painful ornaments.
Snowy was lucky not to sustain lasting internal damage and vets said that she could have died if the toys had moved into her small intestine.
She is now recovering well at home in Wyton-on-the-Hill near Huntingdon, Cambs., and is eating and drinking healthily again.
Samantha, who suffers from depression and is looked after by full-time carer Mick, said that she feared vets would not be able to cure the family pet.
The family think she may have dug the toys up in the garden, shortly before she fell ill at the end of May.
She said: ”I was amazed that she could swallow them. She only weighs eight pounds and is the size of a four-month-old terrier.
”But the big cat is hardly chewed up at all – she must have swallowed it down whole.
”We’ve never seen the toys before, but the grass in the garden is quite long so she must have dug them up out there.
”I couldn’t believe it when the vet told me. He told me Snowy had eaten five cats – and for a second I thought he meant real ones.”
Vet Nigel Belgrove, a partner at Cromwell Vets in Huntingdon, initially suspected she may have reacted badly to dog food and recommended a diet of rice and chicken.
After Snowy showed no signs of improvement, they took urine samples to see if she had a kidney problem and tried a course of antibiotics.
It was only when they took the X-ray that he saw the face of the cat and was left rubbing his eyes in disbelife,
He said: ”We were all stunned. I have been a vet for ten years and never seen an X-ray like this.
”If it had been April fool’s day we would have thought some one had made it up.
”Foreign bodies in dogs sometimes show up clearly, or they can be harder to detect if they are organic materials, but there was no mistaking this.
”We’ve had dogs that have swallowed golf balls and batteries before but Snowy beats them all, hands down.”
Snowy is now back at home with Samantha, her husband Mick Reed, 42, and their four children, Brian, 13, David, 12, Alan, 10, and Danielle, nine.
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