Why do cats lick plastic bags???

Our cat, Troubles, loves plastic. She doesn't lick it so much as she chews it. I had a plastic bag sitting out and it now has hundreds of tiny little holes on the edge. It also has lots of Sharpie marks on it. She hates the smell and if I drew a little mark on it she would leave the bag alone for the day. Luckily I am through with what I needed the bag for and put it up.
Even funnier was a pillow DD had at our old house. She had a beautiful window seat her Gpa made her. The cat loved it when DD left the blinds up enough for her to see out the window. She asked me one day why I kept moving the pillows from the corner of her window seat. I hadn't. We looked closer and found hundreds of little holes on the corners. Troubles would drag the pillow over so it was more cushioned, like her fat fanny isn't padded enough.lol
 
I had a cat that used to lick the plastic shopping bags constantly. Someone once told me they spray a coating of some kind of oil on the bags during manufacture to make them separate from each other when they are bagging.
 
Mine licks photographs... Can't leave em out anywhere.. she will sense them and come a-running! That's how she got her nickname.. Licky... Cats.. gotta love em!

Kathy
 

My cats favorite time to lick plastic is around 2:00am. This gives him the maximum irritability factor that he is hoping for.
 
My demented cat does all the werid stuff others do (lick bags, photos, eat plastic) In addtion he will pee on any bag left on my basemnt floor (not on other floors). He also LOVEs to eat the ribbin that ballons hang from or tied on presents. DH calls it Kitty Crack because he just can't resist it, but it always makes him sick and he throws up all over. He does the same with any plants we try to bring in the house.

It is getting a little old, but then again so is the cat (13 years now.) :)



Lanshark, our cat used to eat plastic bags at 5:00 am to try to get us up to feed him. It never works, but he still trys. Now we have a big bedroom and a walk in closet so I never leave any bags out for him to chew on.
 
Hmmm...I think Rosalind and Beatrice are starting to sound like the poster-kitties for neurotic licking/chewing/eating/scratching behavior. They both will eat all kinds of non-food things, although Rosalind takes it to much higher levels than her sister. Rosalind has never met a non-food item she isn't willing to try eating. Ribbon (especially curly ribbon), tape (especially packing tape), string, yarn, thread, plastic bags, photos, plants and flowers of any kind, rubber bands - none of these things are allowed to be left out unsupervised in our house. Our recycling bins have to have lids. When I wrap a gift, I have to pack the appropriate bows/ribbons and scissors and tape in a box with a secure lid and bring it with me to add the decoration at the last possible moment. Every picture must be securely in a frame - these crazy cats will scale impossible heights to reach an unsecured photo and then chew and lick the poor thing to death.

I also refer to the girls as "herbicidal maniacs" because they eat any plant or flower that comes into the house. DH has tried to bring me flowers from time to time, but they usually end up with teeth marks and in them and in piles of kitty barf deposited around the house. I have a few plants hanging from hooks in the celing, but there's been many a time I've spotted one or the other staring at a hanging plant with that intent "I wonder if I jumped onto the counter and then to the top of the fridge if I could make it to that salad pot in one flying leap..."

And of course all of this munching on misc. household items leads to vast quantaties of barfing all over the house - mostly on the carpet, occasionally on the wood floor, and never on the tile. The vet even has us giving Rosalind Pepsid AC as a first try when she goes on one of her barfing sprees - if that doesn't work, we have to bring her in. She's been in several times for intensive Pepsid therapy after eating who knows what and spending a couple days barfing all over the house.

Beatrice is also an obsessive compulsive litter box scratcher - I swear she has to scratch the darn thing 100 times before doing her business and another 200 hundred afterwards, followed by a round of 300 scratches in the surrounding area after she's exited the box. As an alternative and for a little variety, she'll sit in the bathtub and scratch at the tub and the shower curtain in the same manner. Or the mini-blinds. Or the toilet paper. Or the bathmat. And yes, she does this mostly at 3:00 AM when we're desprately wanting to be sound asleep.
 
If it weren't for the DIS I would think I am all alone in this world!

I thought I had the only neurotic, nutsoid cat. She chews hard plastic until it has a million little bite marks. She has even chewed on the shower curtain. If we bring home a balloon, she thinks we just brought home candy in the form of curling ribbon, which she of course pukes back up on the carpet...if it does pass through it gives new meaning to presents in the litter box. She is also a compulsive scratcher, she scratches the floor, the walls, the door up to a foot away from the box.

My cat is such a weirdo!
 
our kitty does this too. She LOVES them when we come home from the store. She will start meowing and licking the bag as I take items out.. LOL :lmao:
 
Now that we don't have a senior cat living in the house, just these cute little kittens we foster (we get them at 6-7 weeks and keep them for 6-7 weeks), all those things are just unpleasant memories. I brought a black light into my house to clean the carpet good, after our last baby passed from old age, and good grief, I had a dotted carpet...everywhere. It was gross (after I used that nice cleaner that really does work to get rid of cat stains, the black light shows up empty now!). I obviously didn't know about all the upchucks, and accidents.
These little kittens seem to keep their food down, they entertain us with their antics, they go potty where they should, and while only one of the covers their "stuff", the other (the little girl of course) goes in and covers the bad boys "stuff" for him.
They leave the plastic alone (our older cats used to paw at them..which usually meant they wanted to be fed..drove me nuts), and other than climbing up on my legs, it's great to always have kittens. Of course we don't get a lot of sleep at night, because the kitties are now "sleeping" (and I use that word loosely) on the end of our bed, and we have to stay perfectly still, because those little two pound (oh, how they have grown!) babies attack every toe that moves.
The hard part is giving them up to their new homes!
 
We have three cats and one of them Bambi, licks plastic bags also. I remember reading something about that, but I don't remember what the article said. I will see if I can find it again. I kind of doubt it.
 
I actually did find the article. it is called Why do cats do that? uh duh.
:rotfl2:

the explanation given is because they like tasting the slight ordor from the products and also they may enjoy the texture on their tongue.

a real rocket scientist answer. :rotfl:
 
Does the SAME thing! :confused3 I once read in a Vet Article, that the bags are made with some kind of oil, and this attracks the cats, and that BECAUSE they lick the bags, we need to give them Olive Oil or put it in thier food......I did this, and she STLL licks the bags! :lmao: And pukes up the oil. :confused3
 
my cat pees on plastic bags, and anything in them.........although we have THE meanest cat in the world.......shes so mean the vet has to sedate her to give her her annual shots :confused3
 
We have two cats, Boots and Sandals. Sandals is the one who eats plastic. I thought it was only her doing this. Glad I'm not alone in the world. We can't leave any plastic bags out. She even its the plastic bags that go in the trash can. Twice I've caught her tipping over the trash can to get at the plastic----I always thought it was the dog doing that :confused3 . I just don't get it.
 
They taste better than their ....uh...food, yeah their food :rolleyes1
 
Happy licks plastic bags and becomes so engrossed that he winds up INSIDE the bags and just continues licking. :rotfl2:
 










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