Best cat exercise device I’ve ever seen! Even shy little Sugar Magnolia comes out to chase the little red dot, and I got Gwen and Cricket to spin out on the linoleum a couple of times. Oddly, 28 pound Mr. Spock is afraid of it, and will run from it if it gets close to him. I didn’t measure, but I believe Yogi got at least 5 feet up the wall after it.
Have any of the other cat lovers out there tried this?
Our late cat Cricket was entranced by laser beams–it was about the only thing that got her moving with any recognizable speed in her later years. We just had to walk over to the shelf where we kept the pointer, and she would get very excited. 
Our two current cats also love the laser beam, although not quite as much as they like toy mice. One of them was afraid of it at first, and actually ran and hid when we got it out, but she soon learned that there was nothing to be afraid of, and she didn’t want to miss out on anything the other cat got to play with.
More fun with dogs; you can get them to run into walls; cats just don’t seem to fall for it.
My cat fears and hates the laser pointer. She will run from the room if you so much as touch it.
My cats chase it, and sometimes even bother me until I go get it. Sometimes I run the dot under a door and shut it off; the cats will sit and wait for it to come back out. 
Don’t charge anyone for that or you could end up paying royalties. Yeah, someone holds a patent on using a laser pointer to exercise a cat.
Things to try:
Point it out through a newly cleaned patio window.
Shine it on the bottom of a half-full tub of water.
I have a laser pointer that is ostensibly for pointing at dinosaur bones, but let’s face it, it’s for fucking with my friends’ cats’ minds. Hahahaha! It’s fun.
Also, I once pointed the laser into a school of fish at the Shedd Aquarium and they went nuts. Maybe I shouldn’t do that again.
Roscoe the big orange cat will do anything for the laser light. His record for climbing a wall chasing the light is a bit over 7 feet. The batteries died in my laser light a few weeks ago and he has been going through withdrawals. Bailey, the Third Dumbest Dog in the World®, also loves the laser light. I get her running in circles till she gets dizzy and falls over. Then she does the lean to the right, run to the left trick and finally falls over and while on her side, runs in a circle. She won’t chase the light near a chain link fence after she tried to run through one once.
I would also like to add that laser lights and pigeons can be lots of fun.
The Gryff is a big fan of the laser pointer, he loves it more than anything in this world. If he is in the other room, and someone picks up the laser pointer, he comes running. I’m not sure how he hears it, because as far as I can tell, it doesn’t make any noise, maybe it’s a cat thing.
My fish love to chase the laser pointer. My little cichlids try to eat it. The bettas all flare like mad.
My cat Hobbes holds the jumping up the wall record at my house. He jumps at least 5 feet. The dog, however, is terrified of it. She’s scared of everything though, so it’s not surprising.
Back when I still lived with my parents, I had great fun teasing our cat Lady with a laser pointer. After I finished playing with her, she’d search the room for the red spot. Is it behind the chair? Under the sofa? In the bathroom? Where did it go? That cat can jump a good six feet to chase the spot up a wall. My favorite trick was to let Lady pounce on the spot and then turn off the pointer, so it looked like she’d caught it. Inevitably, she’d look under her paw to examine her prize. Then I’d either turn the pointer on, so the spot could “escape,” or I’d leave it off, and Lady would begin the aforementioned room search.
Unfortunately, our cat thinks the laser pointer is a Stupid Human Trick ™. She’ll look at it for a bit, maybe bat at it… then she’ll follow the laser light back up to its source. Depending on her mood, she may bat at your hand for a bit, or she’ll just huff and twitch her tail as if to say: “Silly human. I know what you’re up to.”
And once in awhile she’ll surprise us and attack the little dot like a playful kitten. But mostly she’ll ignore it.
<< You don’t need to have a cat to be a writer. You can bat your own pencils around. >>
One of my girls used to love it. She’d get very upset when I shined it at the mirror, since then she had two, going different directions.
Her mom would look at the dot, and seem to follow it to my hand, then walk away in disgust. Now, 'Lil does the same thing. 
I think Mama Cass gave her a talking to. 
Slight hijack: I’ve noticed both of them, at times, will seem to be actively learning how something works. Cass hates to step in anything wet. One day my husband had hosed out the unfinished part of the basement. It was partly dry when Cass came in to use the litter box.
She stood in the doorway, and looked at each puddle, and then at the dry places, all the way across the room to the box, then skipped away, never touching a wet spot. They communicate desires in a similar way. Neither like to eat out of my hand, when I’m offering a morsel of food, they will look at the food, look at the floor then at my face. The routine is repeated until I drop the food. I get a last look, then, chomp.
The Unspeakable Cat is at once savvy and foolish regarding the laser pointer. He understands that there is fun to be had when I hold up a pen-shaped object, but he doesn’t distinguish between the pen-shaped object which generates a bright red dot and all the other pen-shaped objects which don’t.
Thus you can have hours of fun without a pointer at all. TUC will glance at the pen, glance at the floor, glance at the pen, glance at the floor, stare at the pen, and then go hunt around under the nearest bit of furniture for the dot which he knows is coming out of the pen, but has somehow managed to elude his predatory gaze. Then he’ll come back and waaaaaaaaow as if to say, “Where’s the dot? C’mon, this isn’t funny any more!”
We did manage to make our late cat fall off the end of the sofa a few times with the laser light. She would be concentrating so much on trying to get the dot that was just out of reach, that she would just bound off the end without realizing that there was no more sofa to jump on.
Not to be a buzzkill, but folks should probably be careful with lasers and pets. They can, after all, cause eye damage. (the laser, not the pet)
Ha - you’ve never had a cat run across your face, claws out! (And yes - this did actually happen to me).
Susan
You want to drive them batshit insane? I excersise my Fuzzie Monsters with a contractor grade laser level.
It will rotate and spin a dot around a room or project a line across a wall. It isn’t a mamby pamby one from the hardware store, it can be seen outside in daylight for doing fences or brick work.
I only do it once in a while because I’m afraid of giving the little monsters a heart attack. Or sizzling their eyes out.