Monday, January 25, 2010

Kitty Pica

 
Cat proofing a house is not a simple thing.  The logical items...logical to someone who raised 4 children...are easy....but only one of my children had a peculiar yen.. for dirt.  Even that was easy...no potted plants in the house.  Thank God, she grew out of it, but cats only get more enamored of their favorites, it seems.

 So far, Sophie is my only kitty who is...to my knowledge...free of pica.  I wonder if purebred cats are especially given to this "disorder"?

Miki loves plastic bags.  He loves the odor and doesn't enjoy anything more than wrapping himself up in the heavenly scent.  At first, I just watched him, but when he became obsessed with all plastic bags, hunting them down, I became concerned and now lock them up.  Poor Miki. :-)
Rudy licks the emulsion on photographs.  Fortunately, there aren't too many here!  Old ones are stored in boxes, and new ones come off my Epsom printer.  Second rate ink, second rate emulsion on photo paper, Rudy says.  Just let him find a "real" photo and he grows ecstatic, leaving it very quickly dripping with saliva.

And, baby Santino eats sisal!  What am I going to do?  Replace the sisal scratching posts?  Geez!  Yesterday, I found him chewing on a woodsy decorative thing which he'd pulled off the table.  He didn't even look up as I snapped the photo, so engrossed he was.

 


Still, I consider myself  fortunate.  I once had a Siamese who ate all the fringe off decorative pillows. Now that was one expensive cat!

7 comments:

  1. Virginia TorschJanuary 26, 2010

    In my kitty household they seem to be fond of the straw brooms - that is probably where Santino got his love of sisal - it has the same texture as straw. I do remember him trying to chew the broom when I swept. Now most of our brooms are all stood up with the handle pointing down!

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  2. Is that what indoor kitties do because they have no grass?

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  3. I don't think it's about finding grass substitutes. At one time it was believed that pica signified something missing in the diet, but no longer. With outdoor cats, you really have no idea WHAT they are doing. They could be licking the fence, or eating squirrel poop...Elsa is sans pica? Doesn't love sniffing or eating anything unusual?

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  4. Elsa does love sniffing anything new, but she is very particular about eating. She only eats friskies, tuna and sometimes grass. She turns her nose up at salmon and most oher cat foods. She brought me a lizard one and left it on the doorstep and it ran away. The red chair she redesigned she did with her claws ... no teeth.

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  5. I think sniffing anything new is normal. Being enraptured by the odor of a plastic bag is not, at least not licking it, purring, and salivating to the point of dripping.

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  6. Virginia TorschJanuary 27, 2010

    There are lots of cats that love the smell of plastic bags. My Cleo gets tangled up in them and sometimes runs around the house with the plastic bag hooked over her shoulder. Now that is a sight to see!!

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  7. I have seen both Miki and Santino do that!:-)

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