“As extremely unusual as this is, I can’t totally agree with Cig”
Well, mountainbike, I’m just willing to admit that you have more wisdom & experience than I do so I’d say your counterpoint is well taken & I give on it, except that one must still entertain the possibility (but not necessity, as you correctly point out) that something else is wrong.
But I’m actually more concerned about the question of whether this cat is bad at all. I’m willing to bet that the only thing that has occurred so far is that a check engine light appeared and someone pulled one of the many “catalyst efficiency below threshold” codes out of the PCM…and pretty much left it at that. In other words, as is so often the case, I doubt that anyone actually spent any time eliminating alternative sources of the code(s). 98K is a pretty good number for new O2 sensors, for example.