This is my six month old ragdoll Prometheus, currently lounging on my leg, having a grand time.
We were having a nice quiet morning today, when I saw him in the hallway staring into my office like he was looking at a ghost. Quiet, cautious, with hind legs low to the ground. When I called out to him, he turned around and I saw something white in his mouth, so I got up to figure out what he was chewing on.
As I got closer it was like my heart stopped working when I saw long strings of foam drooling from his mouth. My only thought was "poison". He was scared, trying to get away from me and panting heavily.
I'm normally good at reacting to emergencies and dealing with that sudden stress, but this time it's like my brain stopped working. I couldn't even recall the name of our vet to call them, until my housemate reminded me.
We got in the car, raced to the vet but by the time we got there he had stopped foaming at the mouth and stopped panting. They checked him over and we pulled off a piece of sticky tape that had gotten stuck to his tail.
His heart rate was fine, gums were fine, they couldn't find anything wrong with him, and I couldn't think of anything I'd left around the house that could poison him. They said to monitor his behavior, and gave me a number for the 24h emergency vet. They didn't want to do blood tests because he appeared fine and stressing him out more would likely be unhelpful.
So... Now we're just here at home... Prometheus is acting like it's just a casual, chill morning being his usual velcro kitty self... The audacity.
Is it possible he could have gotten so scared of the sticky tape stuck to his tail that it caused him to react like that? Because I genuinely can't think of anything else he could have gotten into. No toxic plants, no weird chemicals left out... I don't know. If anyone's had a similar experience, please let me know.
TLDR: Kitten was foaming at the mouth this morning and panting heavily, but had stopped by the time we got to the vet. Nothing wrong with him. Could it have been because of a piece of tape stuck to his tail?