Last fall, Linda, a quilter, wrote with a very sad story about how her beloved cat died from swallowing too much thread. The thread blocked the cat's intestines. Since I posted Linda's story on this Web page many more sewers have written to me to tell me how their cats have also died from eating thread. Or sewing notions like pins.
Cats love sewing baskets.
They love to play with the tools we use to sew and a spool of thread is a marvelous toy to bat across the floor. But please, please keep an eye on your cat as she's playing with things she might ingest. Cats are like children and will chew and swallow anything they can get in their mouth. Several sewers have written to say that if you spot your cat sucking up thread as if it were spaghetti you should not necessarily pull it from the cat's mouth, since the thread may already be down in the intestines. I have two of them, and they are great for keeping threaded needles handy for hand quilting.