My dogs are terrible about toys. They won’t touch indestructible toys and immediately ruin soft toys. So every so often they get a toy that can only be slowly ripped apart. I wish they were like beautiful Helena and just walked around with cute toys in their mouths!
Right now we have 3 Bene Bones and 2 Tuff Toy carcasses out of the bin. Morgan rips up the Tuff toys and Grady gnaws on the bones.
My floor is always covered with pieces of stuffing and fur. Currently we’re ripping up and orange toy so there’s bits of orange everywhere.
Our cats don’t do toys. There’s a catnip mouse on the cat tree that’s been untouched forever.
The dog, on the other hand, is worse than my grandkids. She’s got 3 or 4 favorite chewed-up stuffed toys, a nylabone, an antler, and occasional random things that I toss back in the basket when I vacuum. There’s usually half a dozen assorted things out and about. I worry about the trip hazard as my spousal unit is recovering from his second knee replacement.
My cats have a pile of toys in a toy box. I pick them up as I see them and put them back in the box. Every now a toy turns up that has been buried in the bottom of the box for years; the latest was a battery-operated jiggling bumble bee my mom got for two totally different cats 30 years ago? Is that possible?
I really enjoy watching my little girl stand staring into the box. It reminds me of my DH standing in front of the refrigerator.
The best thing though is that both of them prefer the toys I knitted for them above all the other toys. And all they are is a vaguely banana-shaped knitted thing. I don’t know if it’s the wool smell or my scent that they love but it’s great to know that something I made is giving them so much joy.
Mikko has a ton of small mousie furry/catnip toys that I try to keep in a large basket, but he regularly distributes throughout the house with gusto. I can hear him tossing, chasing, catching, “squeak squeak” (or bell noises)…ending with toy left at random places. I’ll move them out of the way or back to his basket so I don’t step on them.
I picked up a once alive but now very dead yet still warm mouse I had heard just minutes prior to being “played with” by Mikko. I thought it was just another toy. !
Max came to us as a relative oldster, but though he has plenty of energy, he was never strong on toys. He doesn’t have great teeth (and he just lost 3 of them), so he only really likes soft ones. And doesn’t really play with them. He just has to make sure we know they belong to him. His dental was a little over a week ago, and we would take his cone off when he went outside and when he ate – while watching him like a hawk – and last Tuesday he came back in from his walk and literally pounced on one of his toys when he got back in. I involuntarily yelled and he dropped it. Now that the cone is off, he doesn’t care.
He’s little (60% dachshund 20% chihuahua 10% shih tzu 5% pekinese and the rest miscellaneous terrier), so he can only have little toys.
My current cat won’t play with toys, except for her beloved laser pointer. It lives in a basket on the coffee table, and she fishes it out every day when she wants to play. If she can’t find it, she bats every object that’s on the coffee table onto the floor, one at a time, until I dig it out for her.
Not very many. Their M.O. is to destroy toys. Sometimes that’s tug of war. Sometimes it’s a solo effort. They tear out the stuffing when applicable…they chew to bits the hard plastic in other situations. They’re about 13.5 months and we read that with “pit bull mixes” they become adults at 18 months…so maybe that’s a teething thing?
I was recently doing some minor maintenance on my 3D printer, which required a small allen wrench. I set it down on my desk–and in a fraction of a second, my cat steals the wrench and books it out of there. The wrench has not been rubbed with catnip. It probably smells like melted plastic. It’s metal and probably isn’t too comfortable to bite. At any rate, my cat ran across the house, the wrench still in his mouth, down the stairs, then behind a plant, where he drops it on the slate tile. I can hear the little tink as he drops it, so at least I found it easily enough.
Cygnus had 10 thousand other things in the house to play with, but he grabbed the one thing I needed right at that instant. The jerk.
I have ONE hobby tool that I all the time. Like for hours a day, every day. Wanna guess what Gormless George’s favorite thing is to steal? Jerkface Kovid Kitten.
The Siamese do not like any toy. I’ve tried, they just turn their snooty brown velvet noses in the air and act holier than thou.
They do steal jewelry if you leave it out. I’ve never seen them do it but we’ve found all manner of shiny things in their beds.
Betsy the obese Beagle has a Tickle me Elmo that she stole years ago from The Li’l-wrekkers closet. She carries it allover the house. Usually it’s under my bed.
The Chihuahuas have all kinda of dinky dog toys laying around. Probably a dozen or so. They prefer plush toys. And dirty socks.
Bayliss is not fond of toys, he has a bone that he chews on.
I can’t remember where it came from and I’m looking for a new one before this one disappears or breaks into shards.
All the dogs like tennis balls, out of doors.
Clarence the 'possum likes sticks. Natural or manmade.
I gotta get Hari, his cat, a catnip mouse. I think she would enjoy that.
It’s impressive, really. I’ve heard that dogs can understand what a human is pointing at, while cats cannot. That may or may not be true, but the cat can certainly figure out what is most important to you right at that moment. There really were zillions of other toys available; real cat toys filled with catnip. There were even a bunch of other items on the desk. But he saw me using the wrench and waited until I put that down. He’d probably been tracking it for minutes behind my back.
And he didn’t even steal it to play with it, like one of his other toys. If it were one of his stuffed toys, he’d immediate set to killing it (possibly with me still holding it). No–he knew that to get my attention he’d have to make a run for it, and he did. And he maximized the distance I’ve have to go to get it. It wasn’t a great plan, but probably half of human crimes have worse plans behind them. And it accomplished the goal of refocusing me on him.
Well, it was disassembled at the time… I took the gamble and lost (for a time).
He grabbed the one thing he needed right at that instant: your attention.
Cats point with ears, gaze, and body attitude; not fingers.
Dogs try their best to learn Human. Cats expect people to learn to speak Cat. The dogs are better at learning Human than most humans are at learning Cat.
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