But how come the slug was inside the fur ball? I can think of several possibilities. To trigger the regurgitation, cats often eat some grass and maybe the slug was on the grass and got licked off and enveloped in the ball. Or the slug was on the cat's food (they love it; cat pellets are part of the diet we keep them on in the lab) and was swallowed, but was lucky enough to be regurgitated with a fur ball. The slime on a slug may protect it briefly from stomach acids. Or the stickiness of the slime may have lodged the slug in the oesophagus and that physical obstruction, or perhaps some unpleasant taste from the slime, may have triggered the retching. If it was really inside the "casing" perhaps the most plausible of these alternatives is that the slug actually did make it down to the stomach before being regurgitated.
Adjunct enjoying some yard time. Photo: Suzanne Wainwright-Evans
