Anything not nailed down is a cat toy.
Anything the cat can pry loose is not nailed down.
Our cat loves one of my oven mitts. I think it’s because it smells like food, but who knows. She schleps it all over the house and all but sleeps with it. She’s weird.
Our cats like bottle caps, particularly from milk cartons. We have hardwood floors and they play hockey with them, banging and crashing into things.
The only problem is that if the cap lands upside down and you step on it barefoot, it HURTS!
One of our cats is a frickin’ weirdo who loves tortilla chips, saltines, and Cool Ranch Doritos, but when I put a piece of actual rotisserie chicken (from our human dinner) on the floor for her, she patted at it with her paw and walked away.
For some time, the bathtub plug (which had come off its chain) was a popular toy. The cats could get it from the tub, and would chase it all over the house. This meant that having a bath involved a search for the bathtub plug, and some unhappy cats when it was located.
The problem was solved when we got a new plug (on a chain) for the bathtub, and gave the old one to the cats. Everybody was happy!
Hermes likes to catch (and bat back) plastic electric outlet covers. If he’s bored, he’ll bring one over and drop it at my feet while I’m sitting on the couch. If I don’t pay attention, he’ll attack my book or magazine, until I get up and throw it for him. He likes to catch it in mid-air, or to swat it down as it’s on its way up.
Our old cat (now long gone) Midnight used to like to play this with arts and crafts puffballs.
Widget the wonderkitten (now two years old. i know, old habits are hard to break) lurves milk bottle rings so much, she plays fetch with them. They are the only thing she brings to me so I can throw it. She instantly goes after it and brings it back to me. Lather, rinse, repeat ad nauseum or until she gets bored.
When she’s not playing fetch, she apparently thinks she going to run out of them some day and must squirrel them away. Saturday, I decided it was time to clean out from under my fridge. I found more than A DOZEN milk bottle rings beneath it. I’d *wondered *where they’d all gotten to…
I can’t wait to see what she’s stuffed away under the couch.:eek:
Miss Squirrel likes a Tyvek shopping bag from Barnes and Noble, ponytail elastics, and milk bottle rings.
Coins. Frieda would sit on the edge of a table and paw at a coin until it dropped to the floor, then she would stare at it. She’d never look at me, she’d just be fixated on the coin until I put it back on the table, and she would start batting it off again.
My ex-boyfriend’s cat would fetch the muselet from a champagne bottle. She liked milk jug rings and hair ties, but she’d only fetch the twisty wire thing.
Oh yeah, I forgot: one cat had a thing about pencils. They needed to be on the floor, and if there was a throw rug anywhere near, they needed to be buried under it.
My first cat loved wacking a ball around, but it always ended up under the bed which was too low for her to get at it. This caused her much frustration.
One day, I noticed that her ball had somehow gotten into the hem of the gauzy, floor-length curtain. I was puzzled, as the hem was only open in one small place. How did that happen? I removed it.
Next day, it was back inside the hem. I removed it again.
Next day, it was back in again, and I saw the cat wacking at it. Now, it wouldn’t roll under the bed and get lost. It was like a tethered punching bag.
There is no doubt in my mind that the cat deliberately put the ball into the hem, just to improve its use as a toy.
That cat was very clever, for a cat, in all sorts of ways.
Our now departed tuxedo cat Rocky loved soda bottle screw-off tops, but they had to be fresh. When we replaced our refrigerator, there were approximately a gazillion of them under and behind. He had no interest in them any more; they were stale.
Every single thing in my house, including my infant child. Although, to be fair, the main game the Siamese plays with her is “flee.”
Ponytail holders are also a big favorite, although ones already on the ground aren’t nearly as fun as those my wife has put up for actual use. The smart one has learned that if he opens the bathroom cabinet he can then in turn open the drawer where the sweet, sweet pristine ponytail holders are hidden.
My cat Denver would do that. I could place my pocket change on a table, and Denny would sit next to it, very carefully extract one coin from the pile, and push it to the edge of the table until it fell off. He’d look at it on the floor for a while, then start all over again with another coin. If I let him, he would go through the entire pile, one coin at a time.
Milk jug rings, the crinkly plastic ring that seals a pint of Ben& Jerry’s, my nail scissors, pretty much anything left on my night stand…
One cat we had could entertain himself endlessly with the springy doorstops in our apartment.
My brother’s family had a dog that loved noise. He had to be chained when we shot off fireworks, not because he would run away, but because he would try to catch the fireworks. Two of his favorite toys were a bucket and an old ladle, both of which he used as noisemakers. He dragged the bucket by its handle to make it scrape across concrete, or would bang on it with the ladle. He was also known to drag the ladle across the the screen of his crate to make a clattering noise (usually from outside the crate).
I thought my weirdo cat was the only one who liked saltines! I like a bedtime snack of some cheese and crackers, and heaven forbid kitty not get her share of both!
The same weirdo cat has some kind of bitter, longstanding hatred for sheets. She likes to come around when I’m making the bed and attack the sheets if they dare move around her. Hey, I got a bit of video of her killing a sheet!
She’s not really big on playing with much of anything, though; her favourite game is chase her around the house, then beat her on the floor. We’ve more or less stopped buying her toys because she just doesn’t bother with them.
This is one of my favourite cat videos - cat busted opening drawers. “Nothing. I’m not doing anything!” 
Gimme my cat back!!!
Champagne corks are another big favorite. Maybe because they roll in unpredictable ways, and are fun to bite?
For a while I had a (bad?) habit of dropping wadded-up [del]trash[/del] toys on the floor, only to hear “Stop dropping trash on the floor!” “'S’not trash! It’s a cat toy!”
The Container Store sells (or used to sell) fluffy bits of feather on a sticky-back to attach to gifts. Someone gave me a gift with one of those, back when Nikki was but a wee kitten who fit in my hand, and long story short she fell in lurrrrve with the feather-decoration thingy and for years I had to buy a couple every holiday season.
Current top toy: a length of leather string that came off a skirt I haven’t been able to pour myself into in years. Kept the leather string: both cats loooooooove it, maybe because it smells/tastes vaguely like critter?
My parrots love impromptu toys.
Keys, bottle caps, paper clips, rubber bands, can pull taps… currently Griffin the Conure’s “toys” have included anything he can physically drag or throw off the kitchen counter or top of the refrigerator. That includes the kitchen timer, cutlery, dinner plates, plastic containers, kebob skewers, and three mixing bowls. He LOOOOOOVES testing gravity.
I had a cat who loved those gallon jug milk top rings, too.
These two like paper grocery bags.
One goes in and rustles around.
The other: Yikes! There’s someone in that bag! Get him!
Inside one: Somebody’s out there attacking me! Grab him!
These two kitties don’t seem to care much for human food. At Christmas last year I gave one of them piece of shrimp and she spent a long time shoving it under the kitchen rug and pouncing on it, pulling it out and repeating.
They don’t play with rubber bands but they do use them as currency or reminder notes to us. And they’ve worked out which of us values which kind of rubber band.
My brown ponytail wraps come to me and the blue rubber bands that go around the morning paper go to my husband.
This morning DH had come home with groceries which he left on the kitchen table. Orange tabby came upstairs to tell me to get out of bed and come see the groceries. When that didn’t work she went and got a ponytail band and brought it to me as a bribe. I don’t know where she gets them from.
If the food dishes aren’t as full as they are supposed to be my husband will find breakfast “payment” of a blue rubber band in a dish when he wakes up in the morning. We don’t know if they are stealing those off the neighbor’s paper or have their own private stash.