Our cat has a plastic jones. She nibbles at plastic bags left on the floor, and has taken to sleeping on one. She far prefers a plastic shopping bag to plush cushions, beds, or other comfy cat magnets. It’s just…weird.
Does anyone know why this is so? Is it just another unclosed synapse in the pea-sized organ that passes for a cat’s brain? Or is there some physical reason? I’m baffled.
From what I’ve read, they use fish oil in the making of the plastic for bags, so they must taste a bit like fish. We have a cat who is in heaven every time we bring home groceries. He can’t wait for us to put them down so he can lick the flavor off the bags.
I think it’s beef tallow that they add to the processing. I can’t find a cite.
i don’t recall what the additive is, but my husband’s also cited some element in the chemistry of plastic bags that apparently is very enticing. (believe he mentioned he saw it in a veterinary column, something like Ask Dr. Fox.)
one of our cats just luuurves the plastic bag that carrots come in. she’ll happily sit and lick it for an hour. but she’s also a little strange, in that i think her body metabolism has a higher thermostat than the norm or something. as a kitten, she practically went into convulsions after a very active play session. after an emergency rush to the vet, we more or less concluded that she may have given herself heat stroke, from all the leaping and jumping at her toy. to this day, though, she prefers cooler surfaces like the vinyl kitchen floor, or the concrete in the basement. and she particularly likes laying on plastic bags that happen to be on these cool surfaces.
Wow, I’m glad to see my cat isn’t the only one. She is absolutely insane over plastic bags. She carries them all over the house, and if we try to hide them, she devotes her life to finding them. She sleeps on top of them. She plays with them. The other cat will to some extent–she enjoys sleeping on them as well–but she’s not nearly as crazy.
My cat isn’t quite as weird, but she definitely loves the plastic bags. She sits there and licks them for a long time, with a kinda blissed-out look on her face…slurp, slurp, slurp, slurp…
More than you’ll ever want to know about the industrial uses of cow by-products.
I started a thread on this same topic about a year or so ago and was appalled to learn about the beef tallow in plastic bags. My girl cat will sit and lap and lap and lap and LAP at bags until I finally have to chase her off because I can’t stand the crinkle any longer. She usually returns in about 45 seconds to lap and lap and LAP AND LAP AND LAP!
Both of my cats enjoy sleeping in plastic bags, when the opportunity arises. I try not to let it happen, though, because one of them also seems to enjoy peeing on plastic bags.
But one of my cats is truly weird, I think. She licks hard plastic things. She loooooves the miniblinds, no matter how dirty (she might prefer dirty, I don’t know, we don’t clean 'em much), and also really likes the box fan when it’s out. Are the same things in those kinds of plastics?
I have a cat just like this. He chews through bread bags and licks them, licks plastic tape on the sides of boxes, and licks any kind of plastic wrappers he can find. Several years ago, his favorite thing was a chest x-ray I had done of myself prior to getting a substitute teaching job. He would lick at that thing until, like Otto, I had to just chase him away. Didn’t help much; he’d come back. I finally hid it where he couldn’t get to it. It’s really annoying.
I opened this thread to say “beef tallow” but since it’s already been said, I’ll just anecdote. My QueenBitchKitty, Tasha, does the endlessly lapping a plastic bag trick and she looks completely stoned while she does it - her little eyes practically roll back in her head in ecstasy. What’s bad is that she sometimes gets herself tangled in the handles, which frightens her and makes her try to run away from the nastybad bag round her neck, so we have to catch her to untangle her. Not easy to do when she’s flying through the house in her very own Superman cape.
My cat chews on grocery bags too. I’ll hear crinkling in the middle of the night and have to get up, find where he’s hiding, and take away the plastic bag he’s found.
Glad to see he’s not alone. Should we start a kitty support group for plastic bag addicts?
One of the two here likes to chew on bags, but especially likes bubble plastic. I think her teeth are too sharp to cause a good pop, but the little rush of air from each bubble seems to give her a rush too - it looks like she’s in ecstacy with every bite.
Wow! I don’t think I actually expected a factual answer to this, but should have known that somebody would come up with an actual fact. Very interesting. With our cat, it’s not something that’s annoying, just kinda funny to see her flopped out on a grocery bag as the preferred place of rest.
Only one of my cats does this (on occasion) and it might have something to do with the desire to eat grass (digestion problems). If the cat is just nibbling the top of the bag then that might be the problem. You can offer the cat fresh grass and see what happens. If the whole bag is becoming a snack then the taste of the bag would make more sense.
Because they are bastards, cute, little bastards. Like the two that are currently tearing up my bedroom… 
No, that’s why we put up with them at all.
Hate for my first post to be a pessimistic one, :rolleyes: but feel like I should warn ya’ll;
plastic bags are NOT good for kitties digestion, but even more concerning is that they can harm themselves when they get their (dumb) little heads stuck in the handles and attempt to flee the evil bag. One of mine tore two toenails completely out of his paws. Of course he’s dumber than a brick, and now deathly afraid of anything that sounds even remotely like a plastic bag. I believe I’ve also read that they are a choking/suffocation hazard. Maybe vetbridge could elaborate on that…? At a minimum, I would recommend cutting the handles off of any plastic bags you leave where kitties can get to them. I do…
Cheers