Why do cats like to lick plastic bags, but only when they are lining garbage cans?
I have 3 cats. One could give a rats ass about plastic bags. One doesn’t like plastic bags, but likes to eat other plastic items. One licks plastic bags of all sorts, at any time, regardless of where they are. So, I would basically say that your question is based on a false assumption.
One of mine likes plastic, one of mine likes paper. The one who likes plastic avoids garbage bags if they are actually lining a working garbage can at the time–but otherwise she’s happy to chew on them. She has even been known to eat a few strips then hork it back up.
The one who likes paper merely shreds it. That is to say, if he eats it, at least it doesn’t come back up. What he likes to do is lick people. Hands, feet, heads. I figure either (a) he thinks we’re dirty, (b) he is trying to show that he likes us, © he is sampling, in case he gets big enough to hunt us–will we be worth it?
Fine, all of the cats that I know like to lick plastic bags. I want to know what compels a cat to do it.
Mine do it to let me know they’re ready for their food bowls to be refilled!
I read, probably on here, that grocery bags are made using fish oil, and that’s why they like it. Our three cats do, anyway. You can practically hear them when we come home laden down with groceries, shouting “Yay! Bags!”, and the licking commences.
A cat’s sense of taste and smell is quite different from our own. They can’t detect anything sweet, for example, but can distinguish between different amino acids in ways we cannot. There’s no telling what a plastic bag tastes like to a cat, or why it apparently tastes so good to many of them, just like we can’t know why dogs are attracted to a lot of scents undetectable to us – it’s just outside of our realm of comprehension.
I have one cat who to lick and chew plastic so much that if you take it off of her, she gets royally pissed.
One of our cats licks plastic bags- by preference heavier plastic, rather than flimsy grocery store bags- and has started licking paper. It drives us crazy. Fish oil? Really?
My cat is a chronic bag-licker (whoa, that sounded wrong). Anything bag-like, actually - shopping bags, garbage bags, cellophane wrappers, climg film, shower curtains, etc.
My cat sits on plastic bags. I figure she likes the way they crinkle under her bum. What confuses me is the love/hate relationship she has with styrofoam. She’ll chew that sucker for hours if you let her, but she seems disgusted/annoyed with the noise it makes squeaking off of her teeth. And yet she keeps chewing.
I’ve got one bag licker and four paper bag crawler-inners.
For hours of Cat-Plastic fun, purchase a 3-ring binder (the kind that has a clear plastic pocket on the cover for inserting a sheet of paper).
Place it on the floor and watch your cat skate, skate, skate! We had one that did this so often that we nicknamed her “Little Dorothy Hamill”.
My cat likes hair. Human head and arm, leg, whatever. The worst thing is when you get out of the shower, sit down on the couch, start playing some playstation… then you feel the 20 grit sandpaper on your scalp. Scrape scrape scrape…
She does this to leather purses and shoes as well. She dumped a lot of the stuff out of a purse once trying to get into it.
That is why I like my dog so much. No wierd cat issues. 
My youngest eats the hair soap combo that ends up in the shower drain. Yum.
None of my cats has had a plastic fetish, though.
I was initially going to say that you’ll get better results from licking toads than licking cats.
This morning I caught my dog licking the garbage bag - presumably because of the ice cream sandwich wrapper on the other side.
For hours of Cat-Plastic fun, purchase a 3-ring binder (the kind that has a clear plastic pocket on the cover for inserting a sheet of paper).
Place it on the floor and watch your cat skate, skate, skate! We had one that did this so often that we nicknamed her “Little Dorothy Hamill”.
How does she skate? I can’t picture this.
Mine like to play in plastic bags, but not eat/lick them. One does like to lick my head and fingers, also cant decide if it’s an affection thing or a humans are tasty thing.
My other cat seems to like deoderant. She loves nothing more to lick freshly deorderized armpits…ick…
For some reason, Lt. Dax likes to chew plastic bags - the side teeth chew kind of thing. The noise it makes squicks me out. But then, she’s a strange cat anyway.
Man, I don’t know of anybody that’s into licking cats. But I have heard of people licking frogs …
Ewww!