Ragdoll Cat

[Mabell]

can you please tell me why my cat is crazy to lick any type of plastic ??
Is she lacking something in her diet ? If so what.

[marissposa]

Fish oil?!  Another reason for vegetarian me to not accept plastic bags at the grocery store.  Yuck!
As for chewing,  I saw they make cat chew sticks,  but my cat didn't really get the point.
mrwjd:  your tinsel story is hilarious...  cats are so silly.

[meggers570]

cool to know about th fish oil! i never would have known that! amazing the things you learn!

[meggers570]

likely the same reason my small cat will chew on anything! and i mean anything. she is about 3 now, but she has always been known to just walk up and chew on anything infront of her. she likes to taste rather than smell because of some allergies i guess. i donno. i eventually relented to giving her a plastic straw as chewing aversion after reading it on purina's website. chewing aversion they call it. give them something that's ok for them to gnarl and they leave the rest alone. i wouldn't know about plastic bags as i have never used them i always bring home groceries in canvas bags because i'm a green freak. the only plastic bags i get are for trash, and kitties leave them alone.

[Ghilly]

In order to keep plastic bags from adhering to each other, which would cause them to tear when you tried to separate them, before the bags are rolled up or folded for packaging they are sprayed with a very, very fine film of either vegetable oil or, of all things, fish oil.  Because cats have a much more sensitive sense of taste than we do, they are able to taste this very fine film, and some have decided that it is quite delicious indeed.  I did some research into this a few years ago because my senior guy, Eugene, would drive us crazy at night while we were watching television with his constant licking of any plastic bag he could get his tongue on.  Every television program and movie was punctuated with this THWIP THWIP THWIP THWIP THWIP sound, drives us NUTS!  We try to be diligent about not leaving plastic bags around that he can lick, but occasionally we'll forget about one and hear the THWIP THWIP THWIP sound again.  LOL

Ghilly

[marissposa]

Mine loves to lick plastic bags too.
And Savas that is the cutest most disgusting image ever.  Thanks.  thanks a lot.

[mrwjd]

Oh, don't tempt me like that!  How can I resist telling an adorable story (well, a story) about my cats, when you open the door?


My first cat (as an adult), Sherman, was so sweet that...no, this isn't a story about sweetness.  It's a Christmas story.

Sherman liked Christmas--a lot.  He liked sniffing new things, he liked racing around the house and thundering up and down stairs like a maniac, finally running under decorated boughs and up the trunk inside them.  Sherman weighed 18 pounds, and was carrying a lot of momentum right then--you know the rest.  

The funniest part of Christmas--in retrospect; less so at the time--was Sherman's obsession with tinsel, the narrow, glittering silver strips of something probably made from petroleum that should put us in mind of a snow-covered hillside of evergreens under myriad twinkling stars.  Apparently it put Sherman in mind of something else, though, something more edible, so (being a cat and unrestrained by household rules) he ate it.

If he darted past with a shimmer that wasn't there before, it was easy to pull the end of the trailing tinsel from his mouth.  If he looked like he had a roasted chestnut in his mouth, he'd let us open it and extract the wadded-up tinsel including the inches he'd already swallowed.  But if we saw a rock-hard ball of feces bouncing merrily along 12 or 15 inches behind him--well, it still had to be removed, gently and carefully but with less elan.

Of course, it's terrible stuff.  It can block or twist or otherwise render the intestines useless (luckily did not with him), and we really did explain to him on many occasions what a bad idea it was to eat it.  But I was young and malleable...and Sherman was, after all, a cat.  





  

  

[Savas]

Heh heh...one of the great mysteries in life! i've heard more theories on cat's licking plastic but in the end run...it's a mystery. My personal favorite is plastic picks up smells *really well* and kitty is obsessing on a myriad of curious tastes.

Do try to keep kitty from eating anything strange like plastic. There is always a danger of a bowel obstruction/blockage from this type of foreign material. I did hear someone tell a great story about their cat eating six feet of ribbon and then having a pet pull the dangling "tab" from it's rear...very startling to all, especially the cat!!! But it doesn't always work out this well.

[mrwjd]

Interesting question.  A couple of ours are into plastic grocery sacks, which scares me because the plastic is thin and flexible and a chewed-off piece could be inhaled and block their breathing.  Maybe the "not a toy, do not let children under 3...." label should say "...children under 3 or cats..."  I have wondered whether there is something used in the manufacture that appeals to them.

I had a cat who was nuts for the kind of stiff nylon net of which children's tutus are made.  She didn't just chew, she ate it.  Even a small opening in the dance bag was enough for her to get to the material and munch it.  After discovering a 4" round hole in the tutu skirt just before a dance recital, we learned to check in time to buy a new tutu if necessary.

Couldn't have hurt her much.  She lived to 16 in good health, and then died from a vet error and not an illness.  But the grocery bags are another thing entirely, very dangerous imho.