I rule. I accomplished something I never thought possible. I taught my cat to fetch. Okay, we’re still in the early stages and I don’t think she was doing it to please me like a dog would but we had a really good game of fetch going just now.
We got Dusty back in January at the no-kill shelter in Phoenix. Half white with a gray tabby blanket covering her topside. She was a little squirrely at first, being super frightened and shy of any new situation but she’s really come around and is very playful. She also discovered her favorite toy in the whole world, shotgun wads. For you non-reloaders they are red, softish plastic in a cylinder shape about 3/4" in diameter and about 2" long. She discovered a bag of them in a closet and has been playing withthem ever since. She loves batting them around on the floor and she can bite them without hurting her mouth. TheLadyLion is annoyed when she rolls over one in bed but hey, they don’t draw blood.
This afternoon I was reading on the bed and the cat came up to annoy me and get between my eyes and the latest issue of Smithsonian as is the feline habit. I grabbed a wad off the bed and tossed it in the bathroom. Dusty’s hunting instinct took over and she leapt off the bed to pounce. She brought it back. “Hmmm” thinks I. I tossed it again and said “fetch.” Lather, rinse, repeat. She really seemed to be enjoying this and getting stroked and praised each time she brought it back. This went on almost two dozen rounds and TheLadyLion even came into witness the miracle of the paws. Who knows where this could lead. Could a mixed breed shorthair be trained to retrieve dead ducks out of a lake?
Some kitties love that game. Beware though, you might have to make it a regular activity with her. On the bright side, if she starts being squirrely at night, wanting you to get up and play, you can always have a rousing round of “Fetch” right before you go to bed to wear her out.
Cool game. My landlady’s cat plays fetch with a wadded up paper. Pretty interesting to watch this thin streak of white tearing after it.
Mud (my cat) does not fetch, but she does come to me when I whistle. Comes running up, stops, and then proceeds to roll over onto her side with a ‘whump’. Wish I could teach her to fetch. She prefers to play “Huh?” (<toss> “Go get it!!!” “Huh?”) when you throw something to her (unless it’s her plastic clip-on ALF, then it’s hell-bent for leather).
I’ve had, over the course of a quarter century of cat-keeping, three or four cats that learned to fetch. Here is Patches returning her toy to me. My current fetcher, Squash, will fetch play toy balls, plastic forks, or almost anything else he can pick up and carry. He’s better than a lot of dogs I’ve known at returning and releasing it.
The downside is that his favorite times for the game are when I’ve just gone to bed and just woken up. The fetch toy gets dropped on or near my face. If I try to ignore the purring little fanatic, he rams his cold wet nose into my face. Repeatedly, till he gets what he wants.
Didn’t ladies used to have “hunting cats” centuries ago? It wasn’t a common thing, like hawks, but occaisonally there’d be a lady who had a trained cat, that would bring her rabbits and small tasty fowl? Is this legend, or fact?
Hey, don’t give up a great interaction with your kitty! You DID accomplish something, kitty trusts you enough to give up it’s “prey” to you. It also loves you enough to want to play with you. Keep the game, it’s great fun. Your kitty is of a rare kind, and obviously loves you a lot.
I’ve found a bit of evidence that cats were hunting partners to humans in ancient times, but nothing showing that they actually were sent out like a hawk was, to kill prey and bring it back. Read the second paragraph on this page to see what I mean.
You’re doing much better than I am – our kitty will sort of fetch, but he insists on dropping the toy about three feet away from me. He can’t seem to figure out that his chances of my throwing the toy again would increase if he brought it back to me. I guess he feels like he shouldn’t be the only one doing work for this game.
I saw a program once with a Russian clown teaching a cat how to do tricks. Basically, he held a spoon full of wet food in front of the cat’s nose, and moved the spoon around until he got the cat to do something he wanted, then he let the cat eat the food.
This is a good cat even without tricks. She’s the affectionate kind that would suck to your body like a remora if that were physiologically possible. When she’s not trying to groom my beard she’s sitting on top of my monitor with the front half of her body hanging down over the screen trying to catch the mouse pointer.
Oh, gosh, did I steal your thunder again? Gee, Padeye, so sorry about that! I mean, as a certifiably Crazy Cat Lady (currently eight in residence) I can’t help having cat stories to beat whatever anyone throws at me.
No, really – tell us more about your cat! (Rummaging through online albums to be ready…)
Uh, what? HUH? Hey! Put down that entrenching tool! :eek:
Ditto for my former kitty. I regularly woke up with about two dozen crumpled cigarette packs, paper towels, and paper wads stuffed around my feet and my face. All soaked with kitty slobber. What a pleasant way to wake up.
Fetcing cats are cool. I have one. Hanna is the only cat I have that has done it past kittenhood. She prefers a mousie. I cut the tail off because she is apt to chew it off. I play fetch with her in the bedroom because if the mousie gets out in the main rooms with the dogs they will chew it up. It has gotten to the point where I can’t even walk into the bedroom without Hanna follwing me and meowing for her mousie. I put it up when we’re not playing because if she isn’t supervised with it she’ll carry it out and attempt to get the dogs to play with her - and the mousie gets chewed up. She is really good - if I don’t throw it high enough she can actually catch it between her paws. She catches some amazing throws - I call her Hanna Moss (after Randy :D). After I’ve thrown it 6-7 times, she carries the mousie into the bathroom and sets it on the scale - I don’t know what to make of that but it is so cute.
Well donePadeye .
The cat I currently have loves to play fetch. I say “where’s your toy” she runs and finds her toy and brings it to me to start the game. Sometimes she initiates and brings me a toy. I’ve had a couple of other cats in the past that liked that game too.
A version of hide and seek is another very common game cats like to play, oh and soccer with one of those lightweight infallible balls.
A former roommate of mine had a cat named Buddha who was fascinated by the little red dot of the laser pointer. He’d chase the ‘bug’, as we called it, as long as someone was willing to play. The very cool thing was that as soon as the human was bored of playing, all we had to do was aim the ‘bug’ under a closet door. We’d run the light towards the door and turn it off as soon as we got to the crack btwn the door and the floor. The cat would wait for at least 1/2 an hour each time, staring at that gap, just waiting for the ‘bug’ to come back. Buddha was patient, just not so smart.
