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Pakuranga resident Rose Fraser was shocked to find her beloved Tabtab vomiting up bits of blue plastic after she had fed her Jimbo's cat food.
Last Thursday Mrs Fraser, 70, fed her five cats from a 1kg container of Jimbo's veal cat food, which she had gone to
three supermarkets to find because it had sold out. About half an hour later she heard Tabtab dry-retching outside. She went to see what was wrong with her and she started vomiting up bits of blue plastic.
"I thought, 'Silly cat, what have you been eating plastic for?' I had to reach into her mouth and pull a long piece out. I got a shock - it was about an inch long."
But the next day when Mrs Fraser went to dish up more Jimbo's to the cats, she noticed bits of plastic strewn throughout it.
"I hadn't seen them before. I was in a hurry and all the cats were hanging around me."
After Tabtab's bad meal, she was sleepy for the next two days, Mrs Fraser said.
But she said the other cats weren't sick. Mrs Fraser phoned Bombay Pet Foods, which makes Jimbo's, to let them know of her plight but says the man who answered the phone tried to sign her up for a special deal on cat food instead of listening to her.
They eventually sent a representative to her house to give her more pet food.
Mrs Fraser says she does not want to "slag off" the company but wants to warn people about the faulty batch.
"I'm not expecting compensation. I'm just concerned other cats may end up with intestinal obstruction. It's just a mistake, they just need to be a bit more careful. If there's something wrong with say, cornflakes, usually you hear some kind of message on the radio or the news but I didn't hear anything."
She said she would continue to feed her cats Jimbo's as they loved it.
Bombay Pet Foods has admitted the mistake but says there is a slim chance other cats were affected.
General manager Dave Allan said the company used 27kg blocks of meat which were cut into smaller lots so if there was a lot of plastic someone would have seen it.
The company use the expiry date as the batch number. Mrs Fraser's was July 16, 2007.
He also pointed out that only 10 per cent of Bombay Pet Foods' sales were from the 1kg containers of Jimbo's veal pet food.
"When it's frozen some of the carton liner gets trapped inside the meat. It escaped the attention of the operator.
"You can use metal detection devices but you can't use plastic detection devices, so if a piece of plastic does get into some product ... I mean it does happen. I say to people I can't guarantee it will never happen again, but we do try and make it right."
He said Mrs Fraser had not told them her cat had been sick and admitted they had tried to sign her up for a deal originally because it would have been cheaper for her.
