Hermes and his New Toy

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Sorry for not having pictures. I’ll try to remedy this in the future.

Our cat Hermes is incredibly clever*. He loves his toys. And he’s unbelievably clever in manipulating them (and people)

I first learned of this when he got my attention by sitting on the opposite side of me as I read the newspaper. He swatted down the center of the paper with one paw, leaving me with a direct view of him. It’s very dramatic. He uses the same ploy with books.

when I found him fascinated by a balloon, I decided to get him his own (a mylar balloon – I don’t worry about him choking on it, and they last longer). He loved it. He discovered that if he climbed up on the table he could grab the string higher and pull it along without it getting caught on doors and things. He carried it from room to room. He took it into the bathtub. He stored it under the ottoman. He found that if he put it on one side of a fan, it got pulled toward the fan. If he put it on the other side, it was blown away. When too much of the helium diffused out and it wouldn’t stay aloft, he used it as a tackling dummy and sled. He never used his claws on it, so, even with his roughest treatment, he never popped a balloon. I’ve lost count of how many we’ve given him. If someone comes into the house with balloons now, he’s disappointed if they’re not for him.
If he doesn’t constantly get stimulus of this sort he gets edgy. So we play with him and give him boxes to crawl in and out of, but he needs more.
So I got him one of those motorized things that rotates a long stick around under a fabric cover, like this:

https://www.amazon.com/CATS-MEOW-Undercover-Mouse-Exercise/dp/B00EHS4KPW

I expected sort of lukewarm interest, but he’s captivated by the thing now. He demands that it be turned on all the time. If you’re in another room, he’ll grab the fabric cover with his teeth and drag it into the room you’re in, implying that you should turn it on.

He’ll do this even if you’re not (officially) awake. We’ve gotten used to the sound of DRAG-DUMP-DRAG-DUMP of him pulling it along in the middle of the night, bringing it laboriously from the living room into the hallway en route to the bedroom.
Our other cat, Hestia, likes it, too. But Hermes is a game hog, as always. If we’re playing with Hestia with the laser pointer, he’ll horn in and get in her way.
We need to find something else for him to play with.

*He’s clever, but he’s not “smart”. He’s self-centered and a bit of a bully.

2

He sounds like a character! The most interesting thing we have is that Harley carries his toy mice all over the place.* They’re everywhere, even the bathrooms. If he runs out we just move the couch.

*We had a real mouse in the house once. He was playing with it, then when I came downstairs he looked at me like, “Oh, HI!”, took his paw off it and it ran away. :rolleyes:

3

We got one of those cat toys, but one of the cats would sit on the moving part and the motor burned out very quickly.

This year we got them this:
https://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/store/product/frolicat-reg-multi-laser-automatic-cat-toy/1046798800?Keyword=cat+toy

They like it much more than the hand held version.

4

We may have to look into that.

5

I think we need not just pictures of Hermes, but video.

6

Without pics or video, how can we know for sure, out here in the internets, if this isn’t all just a sham?

7

I was going to reccomend one of there for him to run off his excess energy Cat Toys for Sale - eBay

But WOW! they’re pricey!

8

Hermes has now discovered that it is faster and more efficient to drag his toy from place to place by grabbing the stick-with-a-feather and pulling it by that, rather than grabbing the thing by its fabric skirt. So, in the middle of the night, instead of hearing drag – DROP – drag --DROP — drag – DROP, we now hear draaaaaaaaaaaaaag – DROP. And in the morning the thing is outside the bedroom door. Or maybe even in the bedroom. Hermes has taken to dragging the thing into the kitchen so he can listen to it while he eats.

9

All our cats have loved the Cat Dancer. You have to swish it around for them normally, but the smarter ones have figured out that if you bat one end while it’s lying on the floor, the other end will try to escape! Our little black cat would leap several feet in the air to catch it if we waved it over her head.