Cats, foxes and kitchen sponges…

What is it about kitchen sponges? You know, those sponge-backed ones with a tough, wiry side for scouring?
Our rescue cat Steve, who we adopted last August, has always loved them. He steals them from the kitchen sink and takes them outdoors to rip to shreds, leaving little flurries and drifts of sponge around the garden and discarding the scouring bit. Which is odd enough in itself.
Odder still, he breaks into our neighbours’ house and nicks their sponges too, bringing them back over the fence to shred at his leisure. He’s been broadening his scope recently, stealing huge, bright yellow car wash sponges from next doors’ garage and tearing them to bits. And madder still, he has started taking our red kitchen sponges next door as gifts and bringing their green ones back to us.
I was watching Steve this morning as he tore apart yet another kitchen sponge on the lawn. Finally bored, he came back indoors, leaving it half-killed outside. At which point a baby fox trotted up the garden, picked up the remains and ran off with it. A few minutes later it came back to collect another half-dead sponge, discarded in the undergrowth by Steve yesterday.
WTF? If anyone knows why kitchen sponges are so popular with Steve and our resident urban fox family, I’d love to know!