Cathy, I can imagine your frustration at not being able to retrieve your camera.
Re the crazing, when it says defect, it's one of those things which doesn't show up immediately, sometimes it can happen years later - hence Christine's observation of it being age-related.
In the case of my recent pieces, which were bone china cup/saucer and plate the cup crazed badly as soon as it was used for tea. Before it was used it was fine - hot tea in it and suddenly it crazed liked mad.
That's what we mean by a defect in this case - it's a change which happens as a result of something later but is actually connected to the manufacturing process, so may only affect some items from a production, others may not have crazed as the glaze mix or the temperature could have been different.
None of this is to say that your cat has a problem - what it *could* do is explain is the scarcity of the polka dot pattern as a whole - if there was a perceived problem with the pieces crazing they may not have made many in that pattern and this *could* explain why so few are seen compared to other patterns.
Of course, I'm thinking out loud here and I could be way off base and there could be an entirely different reason for so few polka dot pieces.
