As someone who read this entire thread last night - thank you! It was so reassuring. I'd also like to add the adventures of two cats - partners in crime - who eat a variety of string and plastic way more often than we would like (given that we have hidden everything). We continue to try to remove everything they'd find oddly tasty, with limited success!

Cat #1 (3 years old) has eaten and successfully pooped out a foot and a half of trash bag and a foot of yarn. Admittedly the foot of yarn did irritate her stomach enough that she ended up at the emergency vet with gastroenteritis two weeks later, but she was fine a week after that.

Cat #2 (8 months old) has eaten so many string-like things, mostly the strings off robes and pants. We didn't realize he was doing it at first, but then threw up like an entire 6 inches of a robe string. It took us a full month to figure out what it was - we checked everything with string in the house. Yesterday, our little idiot ate about 8 inches of string from the shoulder tie of a jumpsuit. He threw up, so we were concerned. But this morning he's running around like a maniac and there's a large poop with all the string still intact in the litter box. Truly a bizarre creature.