The last time I had a kitten – 20 years ago – I was still smoking, so said kitten got lots of crumpled cigarette packs to wrassle into submission. I felt kind of bad about the new kittens not having anything as much fun to play with, but they have their own favorites: long supermarket receipts (fun) and yogurt container lids (superfun). They love chasing each other when one has a receipt by the scruff – but they adore playing hockey with yogurt lids. Especially on my bed. Especially at 4:00 AM.
I woke up this morning to find the drauin screen from the sink in the middle of the kitchen. The only way it could have gotten there was for a cat to have left it there after a long play session.
I should mention that this isn’t the screen from the kitchen sink – it’s from the sink down in the basement. Getting it out with kitty claws isn’t easy to start with – she (this was, without a doubt, the work of the kitten, Hestia) has to catch it by one of her claws through the screen holes, then pull it out of the drain, then pick it up in her mouth, out of that very deep sink, onto the floor, out to the front, and up the stairs, down the hall, and into the kitchen. Where she no doubt batted it around for a while.
This is not the first time she’s done this.
I think I should be grateful that she didn’t leave it behind something downstairs. Or, worse, yet, blocking the float in the sump (something that;s happened with previous “found” cat toys). It’s just possible that we were meant to find this – it’s a message
If you ever run across an old yard rake with bamboo prongs, steal some of them.
BEST
THINGS
EVER
Not only are they the greatest backscratchers in the world, but my cats (and my ex-wife’s cats) love them. Rub them with the prongs, let them bit and play with them.
Milk jug rings
Zip ties
Ponytail holders
Wine corks…oh, lordy, wine corks. Pixel will get up on the table and dig them out of the bucket when she wants something to play with.
My cats’ favorites have already been submitted - the ring from the milk jug. They will ignore all other toys for one.
For some reason, my cats consider hair ties a form of currency. If the food bowl is not up to their level of fullness, I will find a hair scrunchy in the food bowl.
Magic the CrackCat likes the tops from soda/water bottles. He prefers Diet Dr. Pepper to all others for some mad reason.
Morgan will play with anything she can bat under something or get tangled up with. Pieces of string, container lids, balls of aluminium foil, my clothing, area rugs, scarves, paperclips… she’s really not all that picky. Elastic bands seem to be the latest favourite, though.
Ariel, on the other hand, is too snooty to play with anything except her handcrafted catnip mice.
My dog Princess adores the vacuum. (Actually she looks terrified in the photo)
The second my hand touches the vacuum closet door-knob, she’s right there waiting with her tail wagging. She chases it around and playfully tries to bite it. I’ve seen her walk by the closet looking sad that the vacuum can’t come out to play.
I can’t wait for spring. She’s such a fur ball now.
Wally likes socks from my morning run. He prefers the used ones to the clean ones. He’ll throw a sock around like it’s a small mouse–truly amazing how far he can throw one and how fast he can retrieve it.
He also loves my gloves and has been known to bring me one in the middle of the night.
His absolute favorite toy–hands down–is an unwrapped roll of toilet paper. I am now trained to put all extra rolls high on a shelf in a closet with a door, otherwise he can and will find it and take it downstairs to murder.
The other morning I woke up to paper slaughter–it looked as though chicken feathers were everywhere. I just wish I’d taken a picture.
Molly’s favorite “found” toy is…my fingers. :rolleyes: She likes to try to bite them when I least expect it. It’s a game with her. She doesn’t hurt me, she just likes to grab my hand and wrestle my fingers into submission.
A length of rope. It is my cats favorite toy, bar none. It started out around 4 feet long, but he has played with enough, bitten it, pawed at it that it is now about 2 1/2 feet long.
He loves to chase it, I’ll run through the house dragging it behind me and he’ll chase it forever. He likes to sit and knaw on it, he’ll carry it around with him and if he wants to play he’ll go get the rope and drop it in front of me. (Sometimes I think he thinks he’s a dog) I’ve given up on introducing new toys since he loves that thing so much.
Not a toy, but a “found object” – pizza boxes.
MrsChief gives her cats the box when we’re done eating. She says her cats are “box cats.” They will fight to lounge on the box. They get 'em for a couple of days before I get sick of looking at the boxes in the living room and chuck 'em out.
Then her cats glare at me as if I were evil incarnate.
My weird little beagle won’t play with anything. She likes rawhide chews, but she won’t touch anything else. When we got her I was rather hoping she would acquire a fondness for Legos, thereby forcing my kids to keep them picked up, but no such luck.
The twins like a stick, preferably a little bent and with maybe an acorn or leaf still attached. One about 5-7 inches long is great. A popcorn kernel is also met with great joy and pouncyness.
The older ones like the jug rings and hair ties; they’re old school.
One of my kitties, Mr Rufus Ruffus Johnson Brown, buff tabby extraordianaire, pics pending, loves the dog’s rawhide bones. He will pick them up and carry them around in his mouth. He doesn’t get very far, since he is a poor little felineleukemiakitty, but he tries so hard!
The other kitty, Big Chief Wonky Bonk aka Mr Kitty, eats q-tips. I found this out while cleaning out the litter box. These guys cause me no end of worry.
Our kitten, Tiburon, is a fiend for Legos and small toys such as Star Wars figures. I told my grandson that I could not be held responsible for any missing items if he left them out.
I’m sure there’s a huge stash of Legos, Star Wars and Pokemon figurines somewhere in our house.
My cats love those little moulded plastic things that individual pills come in and will gather round whenever they see me opening one.
Foam earplugs. Austen collects them under the bedroom dresser.
I’ve mentioned this before, but Austen’s favorite toy is a little crocheted draw-string bag (just big enough to contain a Cadbury Egg–a friend gave it to me at Easter years ago). She not only plays with it, but carries it around the house making deep throaty noises and occasionally yowls over it, and she seems to believe it has some special significance in our relationship; she will leave it on my pillow in the mornings while I’m in the shower, or carry it into whatever room I’m in when she feels I haven’t been paying her enough attention.
My dog doesn’t like to play with many things that aren’t filled with peanut butter.
He does, however, go crazy for plastic containers. Yogurt containers are the ones I most often produce. He always sits and watches with keen interest as soon as he can hear the spoon scraping against the sides of the tub. If I time it right I can get the tub right over top of his muzzle, with the rim around his eyes. He stands there in delight, licking away. Once it’s empty he has fun chasing it around the room and taking random chomps. He doesn’t stop until the container is chewed up into … hm, the only way I can think to describe it is as a plastic cheese grater that has been mauled by a pit bull.
He does this with any plastic container he can get his teeth on, clean or otherwise. He is far more interested in rummaging through the recycling bin than the garbage.
Also he loves chewing wooden things (pencils, chopsticks, furniture, etc). This is not permitted, but he sure loves it. And he loves shredding old stuffed toys I buy for a quarter at garage sales, or pull out of the garbage.
Despite my best efforts, I have never spent more than $1 on a toy that he’s ever been interested in …
