Cats are sensitive to a protein in our earwax so they find it appealing. I had a cat so obsessed he would hunt down my ear plugs (I had to put child locks on the bedside table drawers). Occasionally the earplugs would fall out in the middle of the night. One morning they both fell out and I grabbed one and thought I may have accidentally dropped the other. My cat raced in out of nowhere and I chased him away but I couldn’t find the plug. Fast forward twenty four hours later and I found a full ear plug in a pile of vomit. Thank goodness he was ok, but that damn cat zoomed in and swallowed that earplug whole in a millisecond and it makes me laugh thinking about it to this day.