Blown cats on the drivers side was the start of a several month long journey for me that ended with my motor being shipped out for a rebuild back in 2008 when the car had less than 9,000 miles on it. Don't F around with the cats, fix it and fix it right..... Either get an aftermarket setup ( Belanger etc... ), or replace the factory ones all at once.
The chain of events as best we could determine was.... Previous owner just started the car and idled it in the garage a lot, 5,600 miles on it when I got it in late 2007 ( It's a 2005 ). The driverside cats clogged up bad. The clogged up cats caused additional carbon buildup on the bank eventually leading to frozen rings in a couple of the cylinders. Frozen rings caused compression to go south with the added benifit of blowby into the pan. This would pressurize the oil system at higher revs ( 4k+ ) causing oil to be injected from the valvecover vents into the intake. This produces a nice cloud of smoke.... Dodge told the Vipertech to pull it and send it to Arrow. Several months later I got the car back, rebuilt engine all new cats etc....
All I can say about my experience is that I was VERY lucky to have a good service manager who cared, and the car was just barely still in warranty. I've since swapped out to a full Belanger system. I'd offer you my old factory cats, but I already gave them to someone here that needed a new set for the same "catastrophic" reason.
Quick edit note: During all this, I never got a code or engine light.
