text: The epizootic spread rapidly. By June it had been spotted in San Francisco and San Diego, and was spreading eastward from Reno. On Monday, the eighth of June, the stock of Iams parent Proctor and Gamble was off nine points. It leveled off at thirteen a few days later. Stock prices of Mars Inc. and Nestle, both which owned cat-food subsidiaries, also plunged. As always, investors tended to overreact to negative news. Cat food accounted for less than 20 percent of these companies' revenues.