Special cat delivery: the Metal Gear Solid 4 edition

[TomChick]

So I'm holed up this weekend to finish Metal Gear Solid 4 for a review. Fortunately, all the long cinematics give me plenty of time to do my chores around the house, which consist mostly of opening the door for the cat. He comes and goes a lot.

So while Snake or Liquid or Revolver Octopus or whatever is going on about something or other, I hear the meow at the door. I get up and let the little fellow in and see he's got a piece of string or something stuck to his face. It's not unusual that he comes in with dirt or cobwebs on him, so a bit of string is no real stretch. I reach down to brush it off and it turns out to the tail of an entire mouse he's holding in his mouth!

I sort of freak out and somehow dislodge the mouse from the cat's mouth. The mouse -- very much alive -- goes scurrying off under my couch with the cat in hot pursuit. I grab the cat and close him up in the bathroom. I figure Operation Extract Mouse is going to be long and involved. Can I throw a towel on the mouse so it doesn't scratch me when I pick it up? Should I get a box or a tupperware container? Maybe I can just wave him towards the front door and he'll leave? I've been in a similar situation before where a mouse wandered into my house. I ended up sharing a three-day ordeal with the mouse, which had a nasty ending involving a mouse trap. I'd rather avoid repeating that. Of course, once I let the cat out of the bathroom, it's going to be a whole other ballgame. I mentally prepare myself that this might get ugly.

Fortunately, the little mouse seems shellshocked. He's barely gone under the couch and his tail is still sticking out. Can I possibly grab him by the tail, like they do in cartoons? Does a mouse's tail come off? Can the mouse then twist around and bite me, giving me rabies? We'll see. I grab the little tail and easily extract the mouse out from under the couch. He dangles there, resigned, but fidgeting.

He's very much alive and he looks unhurt. No missing limbs. No blood. So I take him outside, put him in the little garden area at the back of the house, and then thoroughly wash my hands to get off the rabies, or Black Plague, or whatever mice carry.

When I let the cat out of the bathroom, he's totally freaking. His eyes are huge. He makes a beeline for the couch to the exact place the mouse had retreated. He reaches his paws under there. He settles on his haunches, staring at that point at the couch, ready to pounce. He puts his head down and peers into the gap between the couch and the floor. He reaches his paws in again. He sits there for nearly an hour before I finally tip the couch up to let him see there's no mouse under there any more. He's not satisfied. He continues his watch. I finally put the couch back down and he still keeps watch, finally looking more forlorn than frenzied.

How he's pacing the house, crying like a bit fat baby, probably about his lost mouse. I've tried a laser pointer with the little guy, and he couldn't care less about it. Sometimes he'll chase string. He likes to bat pens and pencils off tables or desks. But I guess that's the thing about outdoor cats: they get a taste of the real thing, and fake playthings don't quite cut it.

Oh, looks like the cutscene is finally over. I guess I'll go finish saving the world from Ragin' Raven or Carbine Caribou or Gaseous Lizard or whoever.

-Tom

[Sarkus]

It's not uncommon for outdoor cats to begin to bring "gifts" to the people they like. Sometimes those gifts consist of the entrails of a dead mouse. Sometimes it's the mouse itself.

Most likely your cat is feeling upset for losing the gift he intended to give you.

It's either that or he's just sick of your lame toys and brought something he wanted to play with. You just threw his gameboy out the front door!

:-)

[Sol Invictus]

In the cat's mind he was probably expecting you to play 'catch' with him... using the live mouse. Till it's well dead and he gets bored of slapping the carcass around. I've seen my neighbour's cats do that with a live rodent that they caught in the garden.

[Cosmic Hippo]

Yeah, this is pretty much par for the course when it comes to cats. I usually find the mice disemboweled or otherwise mutilated on the doormat - waiting for me in the exact center. So yes, it's to be taken as a, uh, compliment. Cats also have tons of fun torturing their pray, and no toy can compare, but of course it'll get over it.

[Rywill]

My old cat used to leave mouse heads lined up on the back doorstep, like the Corleone family warning me that I better get in line.

All the cats after that have been indoor-only.

[Athryn]

Bringing you gifts is one of the biggest compliments a cat can give you. It thinks you're a cat that needs to learn how to catch food.

I had a cat when I was a kid bring a mallard duck into the house. Boy was that a lot of fun ... the duck was stunned, but came out of it as i reached under the bed to catch it. Damn duck got mud all over my parents bedroom. Boy, was that cat pissed that I took it's dinner away.

[nutsak]

You need to buy him a rat to play with. Or a homeless guy.

[Jason McMaster]

Yeah, my cats are always leaving unpleasant gifts for me

[Pogue Mahone]

Usually the gifts my childhood cat brought me were thoroughly dead by the time she got around to dropping them on my doorstep. The best thing I ever saw my cat do, though, was stalk birds, which she did by successfully convincing these birds that she was completely uninterested. These birds decided to start tormenting my cat (Siamese, I might mention; cat lovers will recognize the temper of this breed) by swooping down on her. She responded by lying low in the grass and waiting, nothing more (quoth the cat, nevermore!) but when one would swoop low enough, she would calmly reach a paw up and swat the bird out of the air. Not necessarily a playful bat either; my family considered it bad form, not to mention inhumane, to declaw a cat, so she would just strike them right out of the air at the time she considered appropriate, and with what she considered proper force.

In contrast, I should compare her treatment of my dog's attentions. I had a dachshund that was perhaps the stupidest dog I've ever had. I loved him, he was great, but as I mentioned stupid and willful. And loved to hump my cat. She bore this with the greatest good humor and patience (not to burden everyone with too much info, but he never actually succeeded in penetrating the cat, just seemed content to hump the general area) but when she had had enough, would always demonstrate her lack of patience by batting the dog about the face with a flurry of kitty punches, with a complete lack of claws. This left her free to go about her business, and my dog with a complete lack of sense as to what had just happened. This is the main reason why I give the nod to cat superiority in a general sense, though I do love dogs.

I don't know what the hell this has to do with Metal Gear Solid. Uh, fission mailed!

[TomChick]

I've seen the same thing with this guy, Pogue. He's very well socialized and he knows how to use his teeth and claws to play, as opposed as how to use them to hurt. There are times I'm messing with him and he wants me to stop, so the claws come out. He'll grab my hand and bite it, but softly enough that the claws don't scratch me and his teeth don't break my skin. It used to freak me out a little, but now that I realize how careful he can be, I kind of enjoy tormenting him even more. He'll flex the claws, bite at me to no avail, and then just give up and lick my hand. It's sort of this resigned, "Okay, so you're not going to stop rubbing my belly, so maybe if I just lick your hand, you'll put me down and leave me alone..."

But on a few occasions that I've been holding him, something spooked him or maybe I pushed on a sensitive spot and -- BAM! -- its an instant flurry of sharp claws, like a single frame of a cartoon tornado cloud with claws sticking out of it, and I end up with really deep scratches. This actually happened to the side of my nose at one point! I was trying to lift him over my head to get him off the couch while I was watching a movie, and he got spooked and hooked my nostril. It bled like crazy and I was worried I was going to look like Jack Nicholson in Chinatown (Doesn't Polanski even call him "kittie cat" before slicing his nostril?), but it turned out to be pretty minor.

Anyway, it's pretty cool to see how careful a socialized animal can be when it comes to overriding the killer instinct. He's stopped looking for the mouse under the couch now and I've given him a good talking to about not hunting small innocent creatures. We'll see if it takes.

Okay, back to trying to finish Act 5, in which, um, there are lots of long cutscenes about Auto-con and Snake and Gaseous Wolf.

-Tom

[barstein]

I lived with a serial killer of a cat for a year once. He had previously been a repeat stray. Our yard was sometimes littered with bird and rat carcasses and resembled a Pictish mass sacrifice (neighbor had an abandoned shack on our border that housed a rat village). He eventually started living with some woman in the neighborhood, who used the phone number on his collar to tell me he had built up a reputation with the local senior citizen bird lovers. Some of them warned they would take matters into their own hands if the cat wasn't curbed soon. Gradually, he stopped coming around and finally seemed to have moved out completely. One day, a month after we had adopted another male, guess who shows up. He ignores us, casually strolls over to his old food bowl and freezes when he sees the new guy standing nearby in a hall. All hell breaks loose and the old guy heads for the cat flap and flees. He took one look back and had the most pissed off look on his face I'd ever seen on a cat. What, did he think we were his Ludacris hoes or something?

Here's the "new" cat noticing and watching one of the new geckos walk across its terrarium a few weeks back. As you can see, it's entertaining and probably tempting, but he manages to behave like a gentleman.

http://i27.tinypic.com/rbb4g8.jpg (http://i27.tinypic.com/2s68ox0.jpg)

[Robert Sharp]

One of our cats used to be an outdoor cat (it was a stray and for a while we left it outside). It would catch all sorts of things. Once, it got a rabbit and was devouring it on the back porch. My wife was horrified but I told her that was life (in my most manly voice, of course!). Somehow, it ate the whole thing but spit up the parts it didn't want: various organs that were more or less intact. It also brought us plenty of mice for later consumption.

[jerri blank]

Right now that cat thinks you're a complete ingrate.

So does MGS really have 90-minute cutscenes, or is that just an urban legend?

[fox1]

We had a gap in our foundation under the garage last year, and we ended up with an infestation of ground squirrels, the kind that look like slightly sleeker chipmunks. Cutest infestation ever </mitch hedberg>.

Not so cute? Being woken up early by the cats torturing one in my bedroom, and having to get up and mercy-kill the thing.

[Ben Sones]

We have a strict "catch and release" policy here with our cat Ozymandias (Grendel doesn't go outside), but we do make sure to praise him and give him a treat or some catnip afterwards.

[tromik]

It's amazing how intelligent cats can be sometimes. I don't know what it's called, but they're very good at realizing an object still exists just because they can't see it.

[Ephraim]

It's amazing how intelligent cats can be sometimes. I don't know what it's called, but they're very good at realizing an object still exists just because they can't see it.

It's called object persistence in developmental psychology. Too bad the Object Oriented programming people also decided to use that particular phrase, so a Google search will be very painful.

So you can just use this link (http://www.duke.edu/%7Emitroff/papers/08_Cheries_etal_DevScience.pdf), if you'd like to read a pretty technical journal article about it.

PS: Tom, I briefly cared for a friend's cat (a Siamese), who did something quite similar. One day I was sitting outside on the porch with some friends, when the cat (named Sebastian) came bounding across the lawn. Each bound was accompanied by a "squeak!". I was confused. Cats don't usually squeak, do they? As he got closer, it became obvious that the origin of the squeak was the poor little mouse held firmly in Sebastian's jaws. Each bound would cause his jaws to clamp down a little bit on the mouse, squeezing him. He dropped the mouse at my feet and watched me expectantly. Unfortunately, this mouse was not as intact as the one your cat delivered, so I put it out of its suffering and resignedly tried to keep Sebastian inside (an experiment that failed miserably, he would literally trip people in his haste to slip out between their legs as they exited the house). Once an outdoor cat, always an outdoor cat. Enjoy :)

[Lake]

Tom's story was more interesting than MGS4.

[EvilIdler]

One of the neighbour's cats is usually following me rather than chasing small animals. It sometimes watches sparrows with
interest, but I'm not entirely sure it knows what to do next. It doesn't mind being carried for short distances, so I carried it over
to a grounded crow (some wing injury, I guess - its partner keeps feeding it), and the cat just stared at me, ignoring the bird.

Would a cat regain its killer instinct if I forced it to watch MGS4 cut-scenes?

[Rimbo]

Right now that cat thinks you're a complete ingrate.

Correct. When a cat brings you a dead, stinky, smelly thing, it's an expression of love.

[jpinard]

Correct. When a cat brings you a dead, stinky, smelly thing, it's an expression of love.

Hehe, I just noticed your location Rimbo.

Cats are awesome. I just wish I could get our oldest cat would stop throwing up hairballs all over the house. Daily brushing doesn't sem to be enough, so we might have to shave her again this summer o.O

About the rats and mice - isn't it a good thing to have them nerfed from your property? Don't they get into and ruin stuff around the house?

[Robert Sharp]

I can't really think of an advantage to keeping them around, no. Interestingly, on one of those What If Humans Disappeared shows, one guy noted that mice and rats (especially rats) would die off in droves because they are so dependent today on human refuse.

[noun]

I lived with a serial killer of a cat for a year once.

Same. Mine wasn't hunting for sport, food or practice; he just loved to kill. He would locate and kill something within seconds of going outside, observe it for a moment to make sure it was completely deceased, then move on to locate more prey. He eliminated mice, rats, squirrels, rabbits and snakes (he left a live but wounded snake in my bathroom sink at one point). Once, he even caught a hummingbird. He used to look longingly at seagulls and I could just imagine him thinking "As soon as I think of a way to take you down, I will kill you all." It got to the point where no other living things could be seen or heard in my immediate area. I was wondering how I could curtail his murderous tendencies when one day he just disappeared.

[tromik]

It's called object persistence in developmental psychology. Too bad the Object Oriented programming people also decided to use that particular phrase, so a Google search will be very painful.

So you can just use this link (http://www.duke.edu/%7Emitroff/papers/08_Cheries_etal_DevScience.pdf), if you'd like to read a pretty technical journal article about it.
That's it! My sister explained it to me while I was tricking my cat with a laser pointer - I'd show the cat the laser, move it across the room and make it look like it'd go unde the couch, but I'd turn it off. The cat would spend the next five minutes searching around the couch, and then when I'd show it to her again on the other side of the room, she walk towards it, but keep looking back at the couch.

I wonder how many phantom dots her little head could keep track of.

[barstein]

About the rats and mice - isn't it a good thing to have them nerfed from your property? Don't they get into and ruin stuff around the house?Yeah, my neighbors dismantled the rat bungalow when a new couple moved into that house. We never saw older rats (for long). It was always the younger ones that got caught. I guess they got their food from somewhere other than us.

[EvilIdler]

one day he just disappeared.

I'm picturing the animal mafia taking action here.

[Jojo]

I can't remember if I have already bored you all with the story of the two cats I lived with as a first-year college student. One would bring home mice, birds and partly-defrosted pork chops. The other one caught dead leaves, bits of bread or cake and would proudly lay his "kills" on the doormat for us.

[NoWayJose]

Bringing you gifts is one of the biggest compliments a cat can give you.
Who knew we needed compliments from our cats? How do they signal that you look good in that shirt?

[Rimbo]

Hehe, I just noticed your location Rimbo.

:) :) :)

[armand v]

...Revolver Octopus...lmao
Tom's story was more interesting than MGS4.lmao

[Tman]

My old cat used to leave mouse heads lined up on the back doorstep, like the Corleone family warning me that I better get in line.



Basically you did something to piss him off. The time I came home to a line of dead rodent heads all perfectly lined up on the doorstop was after a 3 day vacation where we had left the cat outside to fend for itself.

To me it said "yes, I can fend for myself, but I prefer not to, now get inside and get me dinner"

[GyRo567]

Anyway, it's pretty cool to see how careful a socialized animal can be when it comes to overriding the killer instinct. He's stopped looking for the mouse under the couch now and I've given him a good talking to about not hunting small innocent creatures. We'll see if it takes.

I've heard some vegans have trained their pets to be vegetarian too. Is that even possible? Would it be healthy for the cat? Their digestive systems obviously work differently from mine.

EDIT: For reference, although I am vegetarian myself, I have no pets, don't have a moral problem with meat (certainly not with animals eating each other), and would never be so cruel to my own cat if I had one. But basically those cat rumors are false, right?

[Sol Invictus]

I've heard some vegans have trained their pets to be vegetarian too. Is that even possible? Would it be healthy for the cat? Their digestive systems obviously work differently from mine.
Hell no, this is a bad idea. It's like making cows eat meat.

[Machfive]

I've heard some vegans have trained their pets to be vegetarian too. Is that even possible? Would it be healthy for the cat? Their digestive systems obviously work differently from mine.

It's a great way to malnourish your cat.

[Sol Invictus]

Vegetables just don't have the necessary amino acids that a cat (or dog) requires to live a full, healthy life. Their bodies don't process starch the same way humans do, either. Dogs can and will become morbidly overweight if you feed them rice, for example. I suspect the same thing happens to cats.

For that matter, you're not supposed to feed your animals 'human food'. Dogs will die if they consume chocolate, and artificial sweeteners are toxic to them. Vegetarian diets don't even qualify as 'human food' because you aren't getting the amino acids you need from eating a bunch of peas, either. If people get messed up skin from not getting enough B12, I'd shudder to imagine how badly that will affect cats and dogs.

[krayzkrok]

This just shows that 90 minute cutscenes are only bad because they don't feature the antics of Tom's cat.

Oh, and vegetarians who try to impose their dietary preferences on carnivorous animals should be given a good slap.

[Athryn]

It's a great way to malnourish your cat.

Paticularly from the abscence of taurine in the food, which is why you can't just feed a cat dog food. If they don't get enough taurine, they can go blind, amongst other things.

[Sol Invictus]

I read somewhere that there were vegetarians who were trying to make a vegetarian out of a lion. A lion, of all creatures. What's wrong with people?

[Pogue Mahone]

I read somewhere that there were vegetarians who were trying to make a vegetarian out of a lion. A lion, of all creatures. What's wrong with people?

Wait, really? Just like in that Futurama episode?

[Euri]

It's a great way to malnourish your cat.

You would have to pretty much pump various amino acids into its food to keep it anywhere NEAR a healthy state. No meat would mean the cat would degenerate neurally and die. Cats don't produce taurine, vitamin A or D.

[krayzkrok]

I read somewhere that there were vegetarians who were trying to make a vegetarian out of a lion. A lion, of all creatures. What's wrong with people?

Well, there were vegetarian "crocodiles"* wandering the Earth at one time. So anything is possible!

* Desmatosuchus - they possibly all died of embarrassment and are now sadly extinct.

[Jasper]

When I was a kid, my favorite cat started bringing me dead mice and birds, leaving them on the porch. I tossed them over railing, letting her know I didn't like it. Rather like litterbox training. We still got along just as well afterwards, and judging from bones I found in the yard she still caught things, but she stopped bringing them to me.

My experience with cats is that they vary quite a bit, and I'd guess this wouldn't work for many cats, but it's worth a thought, depending on how you think your cat'd take it.


On a more bizarre note, my parents long ago adopted a woods/farm cat who in his old age recently started leaving rat skins on the front porch -- just the neatly opened skin, no flesh or bones. Sort of as if to prove he still could, but it weirded me out at first as it didn't seem like the sort of thing a cat would do.

[Hanzii]

It's not the gifts... it's the surprises.

Our current cat has only brought home one mouse and one bird... and we suspect him of taking credit for the bird even though it just hit a window. He's that sort of cat.

But my old cat would like to leave me choice bits of rodent in places you wouldn't suspect - I guess half a mouse carcass under your pillow is the cat version of the hotel mint.
And nothing like putting your feet into your clogs (yes in the country we use clogs) only to feel squishy entrails...

[Brendan]

Dogs will die if they consume chocolate.

This is an old wives tale. We had an alsatian who loved chocolate and he lived until he was nineteen.

[balut]

This is an old wives tale. We had an alsatian who loved chocolate and he lived until he was nineteen.

A quick google search disagrees (http://www.dogownersdigest.com/news/library/chocolate-dog-poisoning.shtml) with your dismissal (http://www.dogtopics.com/165/7-questions-about-dogs-and-chocolate/) of its danger (http://www.howstuffworks.com/question348.htm).

[Brad Grenz]

Chocolate is like speed for dogs. They love the high but they eventually lose control and start stealing to support their habit. You can try an intervention but usually they have to hit rock bottom before they'll admit to needing help.

[Tankero]

To me it said "yes, I can fend for myself, but I prefer not to, now get inside and get me dinner"

I'd feel like King Kong, personally, and approve of the sacrifice. Obviously, your cat was doing an unholy ritual to entince the Tall Things to return. Just as clearly, it worked.

[jeffd]

Your average chocolate chip cookie isn't going to really hurt a dog - there's actually not much chocolate in those chocolate chips. You need serious dark chocolate, or baking chocolate (or a LOT of chocolate chips) to outright poison them.

[olaf]

My mom was a high school teacher and her classes every year would sell that World's Finest Chocolate for fund raisers. One Christmas she bought a bunch and planned to give it to various people, so a lot was wrapped up as gifts under our tree. Well our dog one day, when we were gone, shredded the paper and ate it all. A 20 pound dog or so, ate maybe two pounds of chocolate. Minus the nuts which were piled up nicely. He was real sick when we got home, laying down looking drunk with his tongue lolling out of his head. But he didnt die!

[Athryn]

My mom was a high school teacher and her classes every year would sell that World's Finest Chocolate for fund raisers. One Christmas she bought a bunch and planned to give it to various people, so a lot was wrapped up as gifts under our tree. Well our dog one day, when we were gone, shredded the paper and ate it all. A 20 pound dog or so, ate maybe two pounds of chocolate. Minus the nuts which were piled up nicely. He was real sick when we got home, laying down looking drunk with his tongue lolling out of his head. But he didnt die!

That reminds me, during Xmas, the number one emergency vet call is for dogs who need to have their stomachs pumped/given emetics due to them getting into the Xmas chocolate.

[Jazar]

The damn cat knocked over a box of chocolate doughnuts (not chocolate frosted but chocolate all the way through) and the dog went to town while I was in the other room. Those two work a team I swear. Well I freaked out and was told by a friend who was a breeder to force feed salt down the dog's throat to induce vomiting. Sure enough, it worked and cleared out his stomach content pretty well.

[BennyProfane]

Cat eating problems involve plants, for the most part. They love to nibble on plants, and sometimes can't tell what is good for them. One of my cats ate my entire indoor herb garden--started with the oregano, ate it down to the stump, then moved on to the thyme next, etc etc until not a single plant was left. None of those made her sick, fortunately, but cats DO have serious problems with any plant in the onion family, including garlic and maybe chives (not sure about the chives). They can also poison themselves with some flowers, such as poinsettias.

[barstein]

My cat (the one above) seems to eat plants to settle his stomach sometimes. Dogs do this too, unless I'm misunderstanding the reasons. The same cat also seriously enjoys licking and cuddling with plastic bags and wrapping. Edit: And I mean loves - often I will awaken in the middle of the night to hear his incessant licking and licking of some bag somewhere and he won't stop until I locate him and remove the bag.

[WarrenM]

We have a bowl of black river rocks on our living room table that our cat LOVES. She likes to play with them while we try to watch TV.

[Pogo]

I always imagined Tom as the owner of a Dachshund.

[Athryn]

My cat (the one above) seems to eat plants to settle his stomach sometimes. Dogs do this too, unless I'm misunderstanding the reasons. The same cat also seriously enjoys licking and cuddling with plastic bags and wrapping. Edit: And I mean loves - often I will awaken in the middle of the night to hear his incessant licking and licking of some bag somewhere and he won't stop until I locate him and remove the bag.

Good to know that I'm not the only person with a cat that likes plastic.

As far as the plant thing: even carnivores need some greens in their life. In the wild, lions will eat the stomach contents of their herbivore prey to get the nutrients the need in there, and dogs and cats always love a little grass.

[wisefool]

This is an old wives tale. We had an alsatian who loved chocolate and he lived until he was nineteen.

Milk chocolate is very different from baking cocoa. My dogs used to steal chocolate bars constantly, but one time one got a baking cocoa tin they started foaming.

My eighteen-year old puffball once swallowed half a bottle of valium. We were going to pump the stomach, but it'd already been half-a-day when we'd found out. She flopped around like bambi on a freshly-waxed skating rink. Luckily, the LD50 for Valium in dogs is much, much higher than humans (something like a 20:1 -100:1 ratio)

Oh yeah, this is a cat thread.

I raised baby chicks when I was a child and kept them in a cage. I started out with one hundred eggs. One day I heard a lot of chirping and found that my dog and cat had somehow opened up the cage - no yellow feathers sticking out of the cat's mouth. They were just .. herding the chirpers down the stairs. I'm sure they were having a lot of fun. A quick count revealed none were swallowed.

[XPav]

Cat eating problems involve plants, for the most part. They love to nibble on plants, and sometimes can't tell what is good for them. One of my cats ate my entire indoor herb garden--started with the oregano, ate it down to the stump, then moved on to the thyme next, etc etc until not a single plant was left. None of those made her sick, fortunately, but cats DO have serious problems with any plant in the onion family, including garlic and maybe chives (not sure about the chives). They can also poison themselves with some flowers, such as poinsettias.

We got some "pet grass" at the local market specifically for the cats to nibble on.

Of course, they figure it was more fun to knock over the pot it came in, then pull the grass until the entire grass+dirt assembly was out of the pot, then proceed to bat the dirt clods around on the carpet.

Brilliant.

[Ephraim]

Good to know that I'm not the only person with a cat that likes plastic.

As far as the plant thing: even carnivores need some greens in their life. In the wild, lions will eat the stomach contents of their herbivore prey to get the nutrients the need in there, and dogs and cats always love a little grass.

My cat loves to nibble on plastic bags, too. She particularly loves to nibble on the plastic wrap on console games and DVDs once I peel them open. So it's a party for the both of us when a new game and/or movie worth owning come out.

If you look carefully enough, you'll see tons of tiny teethmarks in pretty much every plastic item ever left in nibbling range.

[Siren]

My cats used to lick and nibble on plastic bags as well. And they loved to do the same to the cat palm I had in the house.

[Jojo]

One of my cats likes to nibble on cardboard boxes rather than the plastic that her brother prefers. We joke that she's a lesbian cat.

[jpinard]

Yea our cats love cardboard boxes (but they have to be fresh from the mail... if they're older they don't care about them).

They also LOVE to chew important documents. Like tax papers, legal papers, etc. I don't know what they're made out of, but our cats eat them like a 7 year bubble-gum addict.