It’s springtime, and my cat is shedding like a fur-based fog machine. I have to keep my lips pressed tight together when I pet her to keep from getting a hair in my mouth. Even one hair in my mouth, or worse, in the back of my throat, drives me bonkers-- it’s really unpleasant.
So how come a single cat hair in my throat makes me gag, retch and cough uncontrollably, but the cat-- who has a cough reflex, after all; I’ve seen her cough-- can lick herself for hours with no problems? And are cats particularly impervious to the hair-in-the-throat problem, or are people hypersensitive to it?