Any guitarist will tell you that old guitar strings that you take off of your guitar make cats go crazy. I have hard wood floors in my house and when I restring my guitar I can her get into the trash and get them out and drag them about the house all night…
And I always manage to step on the pointy ends in the morning.
My 12 string makes for a happy weekend for Spot the wonder cat.
Paper. Small pieces of paper crumpled into little balls, and thrown. Large pieces of paper, and, in particular, flat paper bags (not the grocery store kind that have an actual bottom, but the ones that are just rectangles of paper, sealed on three sides) are apparently the Best Thing Ever to put a kitty butt on. Lou just likes sitting on them.
Used Q-tips. Who can explain their mysterious allure? They are not safe in the waste basket, and for the love of Og, don’t let the cat catch sight of you cleaning your ears.
Short pieces of string or yarn. For some reason, picking a piece string up, and dropping it, and picking it up again, and dropping it again, is endlessly entertaining.
Rubber bands. Best when shot across the room for chasing, but picking them up and dropping them is apparently also a hoot.
Ear buds. Who knew? Apparently it’s also fun to pick up ear buds in your mouth. And drop them again. And pick them up. And drop them again. Related categories: Used Q-Tips, short pieces of string, rubber bands.
Reddot. HOLY CRAP! IT’S REDDOT! MUST CATCH REDDOT! HOW DOES IT MOVE SO FAST? OMIGOD OMIGOD OMIGOD REDDOT!!! (Can you tell that we enjoy the laser pointer?)
Mr. Crinklymoth. He crinkles, just like prohibited toys such as plastic wrappers and clear packing tape. (O, sweet, sweet forbidden packing tape!) The toy of choice to cuddle, bite, eviscerate, lick, lay on top of, and lurve.
We aren’t cheap, honestly. Our cat just ignores most storebought toys (with the notable exception of Mr. Crinklymoth.)
Not to be gross, but it’s probably the ear wax that attracts them. It’s my experience that cats love ear wax.
My girls like to play with used foam earplugs when they can get hold of them. I have to be careful when I throw them away so the cats don’t fish them out of the wastebasket; I’m afraid they’ll try to eat one and choke on it. (Before I was careful, one of the cats collected a pile of them in a secret, hidden earplug cache behind the dresser.)
This works on humans of all ages, too.
I’m going to have to try that toilet paper tube pyramid. Cats LOVE to poke their paws into holes, I imagine our cats would have lots of fun with that toy.
Balled-up pieces of paper are like crack to my cat. Especially when I flick them at her. She goes in soccer superstar mode. Leaping and batting at the paper like she’s in the world championship.
Cardboard boxes. She will try to get into any sized box. Even ones smaller than she is. I’d gotten something from Amazon in a box that was about 8x6x6. I out the box on the floor and she managed to squeeze her fat butt into it.
My cat Dolphie has a doll we like to call The Ugly Doll. Check out [url=www.blurty.com/~dolphie]her blog
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to see pictures. It’s a small, kitten-sized stuffed animal of an owl, in rainbow pastel colors with big, bugged-out eyes that I acquired from one of those claw machines on the boardwalk on the Jersey Shore. This thing is coated in cat mouth nastiness and has been Dolphie’s favorite toy the entire 11 years I’ve had her. She stuffs the doll in her mouth and then runs aroung the house, mewling piteously. If she sees you, she will immediately drop the doll and run over to you for petting. Weirdo.
Maxx the Elder had a plush cow that mooed when turned over. he killed it every day.
Maxx the younger, has a rabbit skin jiggily thing on a plastic stick with a suction cup . I stick it on the table and he spends 45 minutes trying to get it off the string. He likes the TurboScratcher too. But his fav is the paper wrapping from the toilet paper. Yesterday, he was carrying a piece around that had morphed from a ball to a roll. He had picked it up in the middle. He was strutting around like it was his “kill.” He looked like a strange little Poncho Villa
We bought the beautiful but “differently intelligent” Cookie Monster catnip mice. We bought her a ball with a motor inside it that rolls around randomly. We bought her shiny balls and little bells.
She ignored the entire lot.
The only toy she really really loves - apart from any mouse that she’s tortured half to death - is a bit of wire that came off a Christmas tree bauble she managed to smash, about five years ago.
She doesn’t give a shit about any other piece of wire, just this one. I’ve had to twist the ends up tightly with pliers for fear that she’ll cut herself, and I added a bell and a ribbon so we can find it and she can’t swallow it. She will play with it for hours on end. I have no idea why, but for some reason it’s a thing of joy to her.
Boxes and bags go without saying. I don’t get the q-tip attraction but mine love them, too. I can’t ever leave a hair scrunchy or make-up sponge sitting out. Heck, they even find the make-up sponges when I hide them (I caught one of my cats trying to open the medicine cabinet when I tried keeping them in there.)
For my youngest cat, Pi the One-Eyed Terror Kitten, anything is a toy.
I have one of those wobbly balls with a post in it that holds a elastic string with a feather on the end. He not only plays with that thing for the longest time but he grabs it by the string and drags it from room to room. He also tends to bring all his toys to the shower. I don’t know if that’s because he likes the enclosed space so the toy can’t escape or he just weird. Oh yeah, he’s a cat, weird it is.
He steals the dog’s toys and plays with them (even the dog’s new bed), I guess that’s only fair since the dog keeps finding their little mice and jinglely balls and getting them all slobbery.
I bought a stuffed Monty Python rabbit (with nasty pointy teeth) and I tried to keep it on the back of my bed but he wouldn’t leave it alone so I had to move it to a high shelf. If King Arthur and the Knights had my kitten with them, they’d have had nothing to fear.
All the other cats and occasionally the dog make a good play toy. The people are usually better for sleeping on, except for their toes and hair which is fun to chew on and pull, especially while they are sleeping or doing that other thing they do in bed.
All the cats are enjoying the cabinets I have sitting in the middle of my living room because I don’t have any place else to put them. I have the cabinets facing each other, one is shorter that the other, so it creates some nice little hidey holes near the bottom. They seem to think they are a giant cat condo and they all jump up and down on the shelves and play King (or Queen) of the Mountain. I’ll never be able to use those cabinets for anything else now.
While we are on the subject of cats and hair…does anybody else’s kitty chomp on their armpit hair, or just my little monsters? For some reason, both of our cats like to snuggle under my arm at night and lick my pit. Weird, it is. Are they going after salt, or aluminum chlorhydrate?
The Turbotrack seems to have fallen out of favor lately. Flutterballs, my socks, my running shoes and an Amazon box are the current favorites.
Spoiled little fuzzbutts… 
You’re not rubbing tuna on your pits by any chance?
Out of all the female cats we’ve had, only one didn’t lick my husband’s armpit. Most of the females weren’t content to just lick, either…they like(d) to BITE. I don’t know what it is, but they only lick and bite HIS armpit. All of our cats have at one time or another licked every human’s head hair, though.
My cat, a Siamese girl, used to steal my daughter’s nice makeup brushes from her (my daughter’s) dresser. The cat also used to steal the basting brush from the kitchen. The stealing mostly stopped when we gave the cat some Furry Toys of her very own…she had other toys, but she wanted furry ones, too.
When the male cat was in his adolescence, he used to use the scratching post as a tackling block. He’d body slam it, knock it over, and wrestle it into submission. At that time, he was an only cat. Soon afterwards, I found my cat at the Humane Society, and the two of them began wrestling each other, much to the amusement of the humans, but both cats (and now all three of them) still occasionally decide to show the scratching post just who is the boss.
My cats love boxes, ping pong balls, hair ties, and whatever living thing wanders into the house, whether it be a bug or a small child.
I believe that some cats are particularly fond of man-sweat and all its glorious musky odors. My childhood pet was a (male, neutered) cat who would roll around in my dad’s dirty sweaty t-shirts with glorious, nay almost sexual, abandon. He had no interest in the funky laundry of me or my mom; just that of the man of the family. Testosterone, I suppose?
Cat Condo!
Get as many cardboard boxes as you can. Close them and seal them with tape. Then cut little cat-sized doors and windows in them. Tape the boxes together in whatever pattern takes your fancy, so long as the doors match up. Each box becomes a room in your cat house. You can even make two storey places. It’s very satisfying to hear the cat rushing about inside and occasionally looking out one of the windows here and there.
It takes up a bit of space on the living room floor, but it’s only temporary because cats don’t like boxes that are no longer ‘fresh’. It’s great for a rainy day, especially if you have children - they enjoy building these things.
