failure to thrive

I recently heard a phrase that's stuck with me: failure to thrive. A friend had a kitten that was new to their house, and she said "it had failure to thrive, so it died. " "What does that mean?" queried I. Apparently sometimes animals in new surroundings just lose the knack of surviving, the will to live, and they just die. They fade away.
Humans can have it, too. The deaths of elderly people who simply pass on for no medical reason are often attributed to "failure to thrive." And human babies, even if they're well-fed, and kept at the perfect temperature, etc., often die if they're not held. Failure to thrive. It's an incredible phrase that keeps circling around my head like a semantic vulture, looking for some vague notion on which to scavenge.
And then I got to thinking: why is it that babies typically die when they're not held? And when is the point where you can stop being touched regularly, and you won't die? And what happens to adults who aren't regularly held/touched? Clearly, it has dire somatic repercussions. Which gets me to thinking about my girl-free 2006. Maybe I'm setting myself up for some actual medical problem with my policy. Lord knows I don't need more medical problems. So cuddling is in. But only platonically. Because Plato was gay, so it was okay for him to cuddle with girls without leading them on.

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