When Pax toddled into my studio the other day, let out the most curious groan Ive ever heard him produce, vomited at my feet and dashed away to hide behind a speaker, he was clearly telling me something was very wrong. Luckily, the smoking gun was left behind and I knew instantly what had stung himfour feet from the patio entrance -- which wed left open for our three kitties was a yellow jacket minus one head few inches from that was the head, still twitching its jaws and antennae, lip-synching a tragic eulogy.

All theatrics aside, its important to know what stung your cat for several reasons, though its not always quite as obvious. To keep it simple, you basically have honey/bumblebees in one category and yellow-jackets, wasps and hornets in the other.

If you find the body, like I did, honey bees and yellow jackets look similar in that they are generally yellow-gold with black stripes circumnavigating their abdomen. Honey bees are fatter, look sort of furry, move a bit more sluggishly, and only get one golden opportunity to sting if they are threatened. When they sting, their barbed apparatus remains connected to the victim along with a tiny sac of venom, while the rest of them flies away and drops dead minutes later. They do indeed cause quite a bit of pain, but are far more innocuous than their yellow-jacket brethren (read further).

If you are able to locate the sting, and therefore the stinger, your first instinct may be to pluck it out using either your fingers or tweezers. You can do it this way, but there is an alternative that will greatly reduce the amount of suffering on the cat; because the venom sac is left attached to the stinger, which is essentially a barbed-syringe connected to a poison sac, gripping the stinger injects the poison into the sting! Vets recommend carefully scraping the stinger offbut realistically, none of the options may seem feasible to the poor cat anyway, so use your judgement.

Yellow jackets, wasps and hornets on the other hand are a lot less sporting about it, and things happen a bit differently when your curious cat pounces upon one of these little creeps. If its being swatted at and feels threatened, it stings. And stings. And stings again until its ready to leave. Each time, it broadcasts a chemical message to any local brethren and essentially requests backupwhich of course means bad business for the victim.

Stings are not usually fatal to human adults, except when the number of stings results in enough toxin to overthrow CNS functions. Naturally, children and babies can sustain less before this is the case because of their body mass; all things being equal, a cat falls into the latter category. Then theres allergic reactions to bee stings and just like us, cats run the risk of shock if stung only once. If this is the case, hopefully youll know immediately while he/she is breathing heavy, rather than just minutes later when they drop into a coma-get them to a vet pronto, there are drugs and surgery that can save his/her life, but waiting is not an option.

Allergic or not, if the cat pounces on the bee or wasp and traps it under its paws, often the insect attacks the face when the cat pokes its head down to peek at it. If the insect managed to sting the tongue, gums, throat or lips, that can also be catastrophic, pardon the pun. The tongue or tissues of the throat can swell and block the air passage. Again, timing is critical here, take off for the vet at once. In the worst case scenario that is, if theres 2 feet of snow on the ground and no road access, but the cat is choking from a sting in this region, a field-expedient way to save your cats life is to get an antihistamine into its system...Benadryl in a dropper would be ideal in this case, and it will NOT hurt your cat otherwise.