Pets Keepers Guide Forums

I know this is very strange, and I can't find an explanation for it.
We have two cats, and the oldest one started doing this a couple of days ago. We painted those walls a couple of months ago, but I can't see why he'd like the taste of paint.

He has plenty of food and water and it's not like we spilled something tasty on the walls either. He really licks patches of walls, especially at the corners.
We don't know what's up and it's impossible to stop him, we can't watch him all day because we have to go to work and who knows how much he's licking at night.

We're worried because if he's into the taste of paint... Surely this can't be healthy?

Anyone else experience this with their cats?

Is he licking paint off of the walls? Meaning - making actual lick marks? Do you know if your paint contains any lead?

He sometimes spend up to 3 minutes just licking the wall in a certain area. The paint doesn't seem to be coming off.
I may have one of the paint tins around here somewhere to check whether or not it contains lead. I don't think so though...

I just think it's so strange, what could be tasty about paint?

(11-20-2013, 03:20 AM)doggiecat Wrote: [ -> ]Is he licking paint off of the walls? Meaning - making actual lick marks? Do you know if your paint contains any lead?

Paint containing lead was outlawed for sale in 1978 in the US so any paint manufactured past that shouldn't contain lead. They said they just painted a little bit ago.

Is he getting a balanced diet? Bodies usually crave what they need but lack. I wonder if the wall tastes like some sort of nutrient kitty is in need of? A call to the vet might be in order.

Though if the vet isn't worried, your cat's just probably being weird. Ours splays out on the carpet, gets distracted by his tail, catches it, bites it, and yowls like he wasn't the one who just bit himself. Cats are just weird, man.

I have not experienced this with my cat the most sort of weird thing that my cat does (and it is pretty normal) is lick my face excessively while I am asleep (and of course cats have a scratchy tongue so it hurts after a while).

Yes! My current cat doesn't do it, but my previous cat did! Don't worry, its not what did her in. I was concerned, because I knew that the building I was living in at the time was built in 1903, so there was a very, very good chance that there was some lead on the walls on one coat or another.

She passed away due to other causes a few years later. But we never saw any issues due to her paint licking. I could never work out why she did it, either. She also used to stare at the walls in that apartment. I think in that case, that she could hear noises from the pipes that I couldn't. A few months later, the noise got louder and I had to have a plumber in to fix it.

But yeah, she survived licking walls that almost certainly had lead in them. Take your cat to the vet and get him checked out if you're concerned, but unless he's eating major chucks of chippy paint, or licking it to the point that layers of paint are coming off the wall, he'll probably be okay.