Not a toy exactly, but it turns out my cats LOVE to watch the guinea pigs and chinchillas going about their daily business. They will watch them for hours and hours and hours and hours if they can. They don’t (usually) pester, just watch. I had no idea a guinea pig eating some hay was so entertaining.
My little birdie loves to sit on top of a certain lamp shade. Not really a toy, but she’s so happy to be there. It’s like sunbathing that lasts all night.
straws. first battle to strip the straw of paper, then fanging the straw until it gives up.
The monstrous Julian is obsessed with used fabric softener sheets. If he finds one, he chews and claws it into a wadded, tangled mass. Ick.
My dog used to play with the bathtub strainer like CalMeacham’s cat, and the toilet bolt covers like Thudlow Boink’s cats.
Now her favorite non-toys are junk mail (only because I only GIVE her the junk mail. She would eat any mail if I let her), socks and gloves.
She jumps on my lap when I open the mail and begs until I give her an envelope.
She will take the socks off your feet. Or find her way into a bedroom and pick up socks off the floor. Or take them right out of the closed hamper.
She loves loves loves to play with gloved hands, which was funny when I first thought of it and let her bite my hands that were inside of welding gloves. However I quickly discovered how NOT funny it is when she steals my gloves when I’m trying to shovel the driveway or work in the garden. Grrrr!
Her little cousin could care less about non-toys. Perhaps because she’s part beagle like Elanor’s weird little one.
Johnny, why didn’t you do your homework assignment? I mailed it to you!
I have a golden retriever that won’t play with toys. Well, he will - as long as he thinks no one is looking. When he thinks he is all alone, he will grab the latex balls & toss them in the air, roll on his back with them, and have a good time. The minute he sees you, he stops & walks away like you must have been imagining things. Strange dog with respect to toys.
[OT]This morning while I was getting dressed, I thought I heard something in the closet; opened the door, swooshed my hand around the bottom to see if I would dislodge a cat – nope, so closed the door again. Rustle rustle rustle. Opened the door again – Jezebel was clinging to the shoulders of the stuff on hangers – she hadn’t quite gotten all the way up yet.[/OT]
I stepped on the drain screen again this morning, on my way to the kitchen down the darkened hallway (at 5:45 AM I don’t turn the lights on – I don’t want to wake Pepper and MilliCal).
Tonight I’m RTVing that sucker down. Let Hestia try to pull THAT up!
Ferrets love crinkly plastic --chip bags, inner bags from cereal boxes, etc.
We have dozens of rolled and rubber-banded crinklies that we regularly harvest from a dozen or so hiding places, pile up in a corner, and allow our two to re-hide.
They tussle over toys made from a freshly-empty Froot Loops bag. That particular aroma drives 'em wild.
They also like plastic grocery bags. any time I catch one rooting around in a grocery bag, I shove the little fuzzy all the way into the bag and I carry it to my bed, where I dump him out.
This makes the ferret “wild”, doing the old “ferret dance” baring his teeth, hissing, lunging at your gloved hand, or at your hand tunneling under the bedspread toward him .
Great fun!
When our cats carry on like that, I assure them that they are ferocious jungle beasties and I am rightly afraid of them. I make sure to do this in a really condescending tone.
the scubakitties love:
bread bag twist ties
milk jug rings as mentioned
pony tail holders as mentioned
hair clips
rubber bands
wine corks as mentioned
q-tips (play, not eat)
makeup sponges
votive-size candles
straws as mentioned
(with or w/o paper sleeves)
toilet bolt caps as mentioned
(cat hockey indeed 
)
pill bottles
(empty and otherwise)
foam-rubber toe separators
(for pedicures. maggie will go out of her way to dig in the lower bathroom vanity drawer to unearth them. i rescue one at least once a day because i forget to completely close that damn drawer. got to find a better place to keep the things!)
slippers
(my dear, departed murphy used to open my closet door and abscond with my dearfoams on an almost daily basis)
the rubber tub stopper
(i once spent two hours searching for the stupid thing after having been away for the weekend. finally found it under the upstairs tv room couch. waaaaay under the couch. i have no idea how she got it there. that was the last time the rubber stopper **didn’t ** get stashed someplace nice and high.
i’ve been known to leave the car running in the garage, go back inside, up the stairs, and into the master bathroom just to grab the stopper from the tub ledge and stow it, because i’d forgotten to)
more along the lines of ‘toys’ not-found but available in-house:
the tub, w or w/o water dripping
ice cubes
plastic bags
paper bags
ALL cardboard boxes
(they must be properly inspected, you see)
the daily mail, if i’m not careful!
Our dog loves to appropriate my daughter’s favorite stuffed animals. He also discovered that it’s relatively easy to chew appendages off of Barbie dolls (we have a collection of Barbies that look like they should have been issued Purple Hearts).
His favorite “found” toy, however, is anything with blood on it. :eek: My wife has an open abdominal wound so, if she doesn’t close the bathroom garbage can after changing the wound, he has lots of potential toys. Same goes for feminine hygiene products. One time we had company over for dinner and we could hear the dog in the family room growling and running around and we knew he was playing with something. Went in there to discover that he was playing with a used tampon, flipping it in the air, flinging it around the room and then chasing it. My wife turned about 15 shades of red. :o I had to pick up the pieces of the shredded tampon that were all over the family room.