One of the community cats on St. John's Island recently underwent a surgery to remove a fish hook from its stomach.

Here's an X-ray of the fish hook in the cat's stomach:

The feline, who is known by human caretakers as Prince, was found to be lethargic and dehydrated on Friday evening (August 14), according to a Facebook post by Rene Ong, who runs Naturely Curious.

Ong also highlighted that the hook cost $4,000 to remove, and this cost was covered by donors.

Prince was immediately brought to a vet on the main island, and underwent a 2-hour surgery to extract the fish hook embedded in the wall of its stomach.

According to one of the photos in the post, the hook was about 1.5cm long.

Hook traveled from cat's mouth to its stomach

According to the post, the hook was first spotted in the cat's mouth, before it made its way into Prince's stomach.

While the hook pierced a hole in the cat's gums (in its mouth) and caused some tears in its stomach, the cat's stomach was not perforated from the hook.

The hook was successfully removed by veterinarians from the Animal Recovery Veterinary Referral Center, Dr Kelly Yeo and Dr H Wong, via an endoscopy.

Here's a photo of the hook in the cat's stomach, which was captured during the endoscopy.

The hook was dislodged from the top corner of the cat's stomach with a lot of difficulty and was gently removed without causing any further damage to the feline.

 

Urged for responsible disposal of hooks & lines

In both social media posts, Ong urged members of the public to ensure that hooks and lines are responsibly disposed of after use.

Ong highlighted that while Prince was able to recover from this incident, other animals or people might get hurt by irresponsibly disposed hooks.

Earlier this month, a 10-year-old had her toe pierced by a fish hook while she was walking along East Coast beach with her family.

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Top images via Naturely Curious/Facebook