Phoebe Mills owns a cat named Spud who went to stay at his "grandma's" house over the Christmas holidays. When Mills returned, she noticed her little man wasn't feeling quite right.

She brought him to the vet who said he probably just needed antibiotics, but when he tried to use the litter box and a piece of string started to come out Mills realized it was a lot worse.

"He seemed to be on the mend, until he went to the toilet one day and we noticed a piece of string hanging out of his bum," Phoebe said, "He's always eating flowers and other bits, and they've never done him any harm, so I thought the same with the piece of thread really. I thought it would just find its own way out."

It was still sticking out a few days later so Mills brought Spud to the vet. They realized that this string was actually going through his entire body and was wrapped around the back of his tongue. Inside his stomach it had managed to wrap around his intestines as well.

On of the vets said that "Spud was really lucky. If the string had been pulled or tugged, his intestines would have suffered a lot of damage with a huge risk of bowel or stomach perforation."

Mills was shaken up by the whole thing. "I really started to panic," she said. "I didn't think the thread was that serious, and I was worried about him having to have such a big procedure. He had three incisions into his small intestine, and needed to stay at the vets' overnight for extra care"

The thread was 144 cm long from end to end and after the surgery he quickly returned to his usual self. Scary to think what would have happened if the string had been tugged on!

Mills wants others to keep an eye on their cats and try to prevent the same from happening to them.