My vet said that it sometimes happens with increasing age, but perhaps this is an additional reason. Interestingly, her littermate doesn't exhibit the same symptoms.

Both my cats like to lick plastic in all its forms. I can't help but wonder if that has something to do with it. They also LOVE the scent of chlorine. I don't allow chlorine in my house (no bleach, no cleaning products that contain bleach) but when I come home from swimming at the pool, look out! My cats go into a licking frenzy and I have to hide from them until I can get the scent off of my skin. Echo, the one with hyperthyroidism, also likes to remove any perfume that I wearing, so I never put on perfume until I am right about to leave the house as I am afraid of what licking perfume will due to her. She also licks soap, so I changed to using liquid soap. I also found her happily chewing away on my toothbrush one day. Who knows how long that had been going on! Now I store my toothbrush where Echo can't get her paws on it.

Yes, Eric and RozGrist, it is frightening to learn -- just to begin to learn, starting with the tip of the iceberg -- about what trouble our beloved animal companions may be getting into, in the normal course of their experiencing what weird substances our households are made up of.

Cats and dogs, as well as birds and rodents, and no doubt other vertebrates, have much higher metabolisms than we do, and are affected much quicker and much more severely by toxic elements in the environment than we are.  Here in NYC, where we live on the ground floor, I dread the day when there is a "fuel delivery": the fumes fill the apartment, and it is always best if we are aware at once, so that we may shut the front windows, open the back windows and turn on the fans.  Little White Dog, meanwhile, never complains, but of course it is she that I am worried about.

Cats seem to be well adapted to surviving brilliantly on their own, in our absence, so long as they can get outside, amazingly efficient predators that they are; whereas dogs, in our absence, terrificly dependent on our good pleasure and our care, would probably be doomed -- according to a recent book that speculates on what would happen to life on Earth, if human beings were to disappear.  Could be.  I definitely believe that about cats.  And I believe that about many dogs, but not all; I suspect a few of them would hang on.  (Not Little White, I am afraid, unless she plays her cards right.)

Anyway, it is ironic, then, that the recent problem of contaminated food imported from China affected the much more specialized digestive systems of cats, true carnivores, than it did that of dogs, omnivores with a catholic diet including some awfully offensive items.

Yesterday evening, I called L.L. Bean, to order a doggie blanket for Little White Dog, and I asked first, before actually ordering, that it be clear that no parts of the blanket were made in China.  The agent on the line did what little research she could, and then urged me to call back tomorrow (today!), to speak to a "product specialist."  So far from thinking I was a crank, she told me that her dog was her baby too, and she perfectly understands that we who love our companion animals do not want to introduce anything dangerous into their environment.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!