Trixie Minx started it — as usual — and now her older sister Quila has joined in. They’re eating plastic.
Not quite in front of my face, but while I’m on the toilet and can’t get up to stop them.
It started with me hearing munching noises while in the bathroom on the toilet. No, I don’t take food into the bathroom or put my cat’s food in there. I pinpoint where the sound is emanating from. I carefully lift the shower curtain.
Trixie is perched on the bathtub ledge with the plastic shower curtain liner in her mouth. She keeps munching, looking at me with “What you gonna do about it” written on her adorable furry face.
She’s obviously been at it awhile. There are cat teeth marks up all one side of the curtain, as high as she can reach while perched on the bathtub.
I yell “NO” and she runs out.
Not for long though. Every day during my toilet times, she can be found behind the front shower curtain, nibbling away at the plastic liner. If that weren’t bad enough, she’s gotten good enough at her toothy habit that she has torn some small pieces off and left them on the bathroom floor.
Enter Quila, my normally well-behaved cat who — now that she’s grown out of her feral habit of making a dash for the door and escaping into the green space around our apartment, disappearing up a tree and panicking — has become the ideal cat. Yes, there are such animals.
Out of character, she spots a piece of plastic on the floor. She begins playing with it as if it were a lizard or mouse. She is channeling her feral, primal nature. I watch helpless as she bites it, tosses it around, tosses it further away from me on the toilet, then sucks it right down.
As far as I know, Trixie just chews on plastic. Now, with Quila, I have a plastic eater.
Dr. Internet says they have pica. People get this too, because of a nutritional lack. Usually zinc. My cats eat two of the best foods on the market. I’ve fed one of them to all my previous cats, who never ate the shower curtain liner while I was on the toilet. Or anytime.
Cats, however, can also get it when they’re bored.
First, If I could train them to come when I call — as my Maine Coon, Max, did — I wouldn’t have to worry that I was on the toilet when they start acting up. They are not trainable types of cats. Although Trixie has trained me to play fetch.
Second, these cats of mine have a cat tree, a cat wheel, and toys enough to make the living room look like a kitty daycare. They have a tunnel. They have a device requiring them to dig out their treats. They have a toy on the patio where they like to hang out and watch the squirrels make fun of them, and the birds flit through the trees.
They are more enriched than I am. I’d like to go to the ballet and then to play pool at a dive bar and listen to the Blues. But no, I have to stay home and enrich the cats.
Third, Trixie is so smart, she figures out where the automatic laser light is coming from, and climbs up to mess with it. If she can figure out how to turn it on herself, she will. She goes to find the hand-held laser pointer and brings it to me. She knows how it works and who makes it light up and dance around for her to chase.
So she totally knows that when she is chewing on the end of the plastic shower curtain liner furthest from the toilet — while I’m on it — I can’t stop her.
If cats could say “Nyah, Nyah, Nyah” she would. And Quila will do whatever Trixie does — only more sweetly. Both with a mouthful of plastic.
. . .
Thank you to BOFace for sharing with me his extensive knowledge about cats, toilet habits, and editing.
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This post was previously published on MuddyUm.
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