When navigating the minefield that is my living-room floor, dodging the plethora of cat-toys scattered hither and yon, I began to cogitate on which toys are essential and which are just…in the way. Around here, there are two (sorta). Pixel’s favorite toy is her Flutter Ball. She plays with this thing constantly, throwing it in the air and chasing it around the room. Havoc, OTOH, prefers the dangly toys hanging from the bottom of the kitty condo. We bring home different hanging toys from our travels, and attach them to the condo. Havoc loves to climb the outside and play Kong with them.
Just in case these activities begin to bore them…what do your cats prefer to play with?
My cats love Flutter Balls, but attack them with great vigor, so that they don’t last more than a day or two before all the feathers are gone.
My cats’ favorite toys are Cat Dancers, and this brilliantly-designed toy. I toss some Greenies and other random crap in there and they go crazy trying to get it out.
Austen’s favorite is what I call “the crochetty toy.”* It’s a sort of little purselike object with a drawstring; IIRC, a friend made it and gave it to me for Easter or Christmas some years ago with candy inside. To the cat, however, it’s become a sort of teddy-bear, surrogate kitten, and significant symbol of feline affection for the human. She not only plays with it like a usual cat-toy, she sleeps with it hugged to her chest with her front paws, carries it around the house making throaty purring noises, and occasionally yowls over it as if she’s mourning. When I get up in the morning to take a shower, and come back to the bedroom, she’s placed it on my bed where I was sleeping.
Lucia, on the other hand, eschews all catnip mice and jingle-bell balls, and prefers to play with tiny blobs of dust or those little plastic moulded forms that pills come in.
*i.e., made out crochetted yarn, not to be confused with crotchety, like an old man.
I got my cats this TurboScratcher for Christmas, and they love it. Sometimes they lay on opposite sides and pass the ball back and forth to each other. Other times, Dinah will play with it while Violet watches, then when Vi decides it’s her turn she’ll pounce on Dinah until she submits. Good times.
They had some of those Flutter Balls, but between them and the dog, there are no feathers left. That is to say, the feathers are scattered around the house and no longer attatched to the balls.
Violet really likes pipe cleaners (or “chenille stems,” as they’re called these days). We twist them up and curl the ends over so they’re not pokey, and she chases them around the kitchen floor.
Flutterballs are a great favorite with the felines in the Bodoni household. Milk jug rings are also VERY popular. Each time I open a jug of milk, I get a triple cat scan, as each cat silently begs for the ring. Apparently the rings are very tasty, especially when they’re fresh. The laser pointer delights and frustrates a couple of the cats, but the third is not interested in it. We have to buy “bouncy mousies” on a regular basis. These are little furry toys which are on an elastic string, which hangs from a door frame. The elastic wears out, and the stuffed toy mouse gets pretty sorry looking. We buy practice golf balls and let the cats chase them. My daughter bought a toy launcher which shoots tiny Frisbees. They’re about an inch and a half in diameter, and lots of fun for everyone.
We get a lot of use from paper bags and cardboard boxes, too. We are required to keep a couple of empty shoe boxes in the living room, for the cats to sit in. Apparently, sitting in a cardboard box is incredibly satisfying.
I think that the cats’ favorite toy is toes under the covers. They move and make noises.
Emmy loves the tops to Coke bottles. She’ll cry at us forever until we actually let her have it and play with it.
They both love their catnip-stuffed mice. I made the mistake of getting organic catnip once, and now that’s all they’ll have :rolleyes: .
The one toy they adore, but I don’t have anymore of (because I used to get them in the pet store in NYC) are catnip cigars. I don’t know what kind of catnip they put in those things, but they’re like heroin to my two.
Honestly, if it moves, they’ll play with it. They aren’t picky.
our cats seem to be immune to the effects of catnip, they honestly don’t care for it, it’s really strange
Blue (black and white shorthair) loves wire twist-ties and the plastic rings from milk bottles, bats them around all day, he’s also aggressively freindly, he’ll walk up to you, roll on his back and grab your arm as if to say “pay attention to me, dammit!”
Nemo (orange and white shorthair) sees Blue as his toy, he’ll chase him around and steal his toys, Nemo doesn’t seem to care about toys either way, unless Blue’s playing with it, then it suddenly becomes very desirable…
they both are indifferent to my green laser pointer…unless the dot is “climbing the wall” or on the ceiling, then it becomes the most fascinating thing they’ve ever seen, but a green dot on the floor or wherever they’re resting results in a solid “meh”
i figured i’d pick them up some toys yesterday, so i picked up a little package of 4 Hartz “tribbles” (little fuzzy balls), Blue loved them, for about five minutes then decided an empty cardboard box was more needing of his attention, Nemo didn’t care about the tribbles (unless Blue was playing with them, then he had to have them…)
Much like babies are happy to play with wrapping paper, or the box that the gift came in, my Sophie is quite happy with tissue paper or any other scraps of paper that happen to be on the floor. She’s like a magnet to it!
She grabs a corner, flops over so that the corner is on top of her, goes “*Aah * it’s attacking me!”, defends herself ferociously, etc. I come home from work to find that all four corners of the rug are flipped up, and the cat is exhausted. No cat toy that’s actually designed to be a “cat toy” has ever come close.
Ah yes, that reminds me of another of my cats’ favorite toys: a pillowcase knotted on one end. I hold on to the other end and move it across the floor, and they grab and wrestle with it. The knot is big enough for them to grab with their teeth and claws while raking furiously with their back legs, and it’s great for redirecting excess energy when one of them wants to play-fight and the other wants no part of it.
My cat doesn’t seem to care for conventional cat toys. I got her some little mice when I got her and she never seemed to notice. She goes absolutely nuts, though, for this wee plush turtle. I just got it on a whim because I thought it was cute and she fell in love with it. It’ll be lying on the floor and she’ll go strolling past. Suddenly she’ll whip around and give it this look like, “WHAT DID YOU SAY?!?!” and WHOP! slapshot the turtle across the room.
Another toy she likes almost as much is a plush carrot with feathers sticking up out of the end instead of a stem. It’s got a little velcroed pouch so you can stick catnip in it.
My in-laws used to have a dorky cat named Winston. He absolutely loved foil. He would actually play fetch with little balls of foil. I didn’t know how much he loved foil until one day, me and Mr AFG were visiting. We were in the basement, watching a movie. The cat was upstairs. I had a Cadbury creme egg. I began to peel the foil off. The foil made the tiniest little:
crkk
Suddenly! We heard this tremendous thundering on the floor upstairs,
RUMBLErumbleRUMBLErumble
And then down the stairs,
BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM
Suddenly, the cat was standing there in front of me, gasping for air, staring at the scrap of foil with maniacal eyes. It was one of the funniest things I’d ever seen.
All of our cats love the traditional, normal cat toy types of things - flutterballs, Boogie-mats, mice, scratching posts, etc.
Cuervo loves my hands and the last few months have left me with bloody stumps for fingers.
But lately his very very favorite toy is a mini foam Chicago Bear football that’s one of those ones that when you smack it, makes a sound. It either screams “Da Bears”, or sings a few bars of “Bear Down…” He grabs it, body slams it then stands there like the RCA Victor dog, watching it sing to him.
Oh, yeah. That reminds me that Emmy goes nuts over our bath mat. We’ve gone in to take showers in the morning and have found it wadded up in the corner, looking like it’s had the tar kicked out of it. Or if she follows us into the bathroom, she’ll amuse herself by taking a flying leap onto it and running right into the bathtub.
Really amusing. Almost as amusing as when one of them falls off the couch, and gives that “I meant to do that.” look.
I got two little boy kittens in December (Sufi & Kink), and I got a great book for Christmas - The Cat Detective by Vicky Halls http://tinyurl.com/dg3ns
In it she recommends this brilliantly free toy - basically save up all your old toilet roll ‘tubes’, then sellotape/stick them together in a pyramid. Use it as a ‘feeding toy’ i.e. put cat treats in some of the tubes and leave some empty. You need to hold it while they are playing, but it is the CUTEST thing ever to see your little bubba poking his paw through the tubes and looking through them like a telescope! The game is designed to help develop their food foraging instincts. She also suggests leaving tubes scattered throughout the house, some with treats, some without, for them to discover on their own.
She also recommends that you keep your cat toys put away, and only keep one or two out at a time - it keeps them interesting.
